By Yves Poirmeur
Translation: Melissa Okabe
Passage au crible n°26
On April 14, 2010, the Eyjafjallajökull Icelandic volcano burst into eruption. A cloud of abrasive ashes posed a threat to the functioning of airline jet engines, as it slowly formed and descended little by little over Europe. To remove all risk of accidents, British and Irish aviation authorities, followed by the Norwegian, Swedish, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgian, German, and French authorities, interrupted the airline traffic over all or part of their territory. During the week of paralysis, 100000 flights were cancelled, stranding 8 million passengers as well as airline freight. The world economy will have suffered costs of 5 billion dollars, 2.6 million affecting Europe, and notably costing 260 million dollars for France alone. Concerning the airline companies, they will have lost 188 million dollars. Concerning the tour operators and the tourist agencies, their losses will have risen respectively to 31 and 40 million dollars.
> Historical background
> Theoretical framework
> Analysis
> References
Is precaution or prevention essential? The danger of volcanic ash clouds to aircrafts is well known. This knowledge is based on two cases of tremendous aircraft failure in passing through the ash clouds discharged over Indonesia by Mount Gallunggung (British Airways plane in 1982) and Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano (The 1989 KLM plane with 500 passengers on board where luckily the engines were able to restart), along with the damages suffered by about twenty other devices, of which the cost of repairing was numbered in millions of dollars, as the norms of aviation security exclude any risk-taking. Following the direction produced by the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in conjunction with the meteorological services (in Europe, the VAAC (Volcanic Ash Advisory Center) in London, and the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Toulouse), airlines must by-pass the ash clouds and must be diverted toward another airport when their destination airport has become inaccessible. For the first time, this rule was applied to one of the most dense zones of airline circulation in the world – the London-Heathrow airport receives 1300 flights daily, the Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport welcomes 83 thousand passengers per year – showing evidence of the globalization of the precautionary and prevention principles and also its limits. The resulting crisis, also stands as an assessment of the increasing contradictions between the economic trans-nationalization and the political fragmentation of the world.
1. Globalization of the precautionary/ preventative principle. Rather than the precautionary principle commonly called upon in event of a crisis, in reality, it is instead the prevention principle which was in fact applied. In effect, the precautionary principle applies itself to hypotheses in which the actualization of a serious and irreversible danger – although uncertain in the state of scientific knowledge – can intervene. This principle demands the putting in place of the risk evaluation procedures and the adoption of provisionary and proportionality measures, in order to prepare for the actualization of damages. In this circumstance, the risks were confirmed by previous events, such as accidents due to lack of accuracy, high costs for repairing, or damages subjected on the apparatus in entering into such clouds. The interruption of air traffic, decided upon by the authorities therefore reveal prevention, but it also concerns the avoidance of engaging in a course of real danger for the passengers.
2. Economic Transnationalization and Political Fragmentation. This crisis was not only the result of a natural phenomenon. It was also encouraged by the political rupture of air traffic control. In the same manner, the crisis was also amplified by the economic logistics of corporations in the airline sector and even more by the internationalization of trade, which in unifying the world, also causes the economy to be extremely dependent on the smooth functioning of transport and communication systems.
In this matter, many concurrent elements together close in on the principles of caution and prevention: on one hand, there is the uncertainty of the exact location of the cloud displaced by the wind, on the other hand, the insufficiency of scientific knowledge concerning the entryway of the concentration of ashes by which the security of the airlines would be threatened; finally, the absence of efficient instruments able to measure these concentrations in the different aerial zones. To limit the economic consequences of the closing of airline traffic, it was necessary to analyze the cartographic risks available by using the meteorologists’ mathematic model. However this hardly gives information on the density of the cloud. In this instance, it is in a simply empirical fashion – sent by trial planes in the different aviation pathways – that the severity and the variability of risk was tested by the airline companies, in conjunction with the regulatory authority. The suggestions by the ministers of European transport have finally distinguished three zones of risk in function of the concentration of ashes in the air: 1) in the high risk zone, the traffic was banned, 2) in the medium risk zone, traffic could be authorized by each state, 3) in the low risk zone, traffic remained opened. In such a configuration of actors, void of certain interest – to start by the airline companies and regulators – to risk the sight of plane damage or even a simple incident, considers the generalized mistrust by the air transport which it would have provoked. However the review of security recommendations, intervening without a new technical system of the evaluation of risks being put in place, reveals the weakness of the demand of prudence in a sector of activity, essential to the functioning of societies and economic interdependence.
Many factors contributed to aggravating the crisis and complicating its resolution. First off, the “Modes of Regulation” of the European Airspace appear largely irrational. In effect, instead of being carved into functional zones, it was divided into national zones determined by state borders, which all the more so complicate the airline circulation in this dense traffic zone, and in doing so multiplies the constriction of narrow sections in this area. Moreover, in place of being entrusted to an exclusive European supervisor as to optimize the airline traffic, the control is carried out by national organizations which juxtapose the European regulator, Eurocontrol. Secondly the economic models adopted by the airline companies and the airport societies heighten the consequences of all closure, even partial closure, of the airspace. Organized in networks centralizing the airline traffic in a few hubs by which they optimize the filling of their planes, the large companies find themselves very affected by any blocking of these platforms. Concerning the low cost businesses, those which the profitability/ return rest on the continual rotation of their planes starting from the small airports that they connect in, all risks of circuit interruption drives them to prefer the preventative annulations of all of their flights, rather than to suffer the financial consequences of guardianship for stranded passengers. Finally, division of labor and international specialization, along with the development of transnational flows – of merchandise, services, and tourists – rapidly increase the economic consequences of all unexpected stops of airline traffic in a dense traffic zone. Certainly, the more globalization intensifies, the more national regulation shows itself to be maladjusted, and more so, the pressures are therefore strong in strategic sectors securing the circulation of flow, to limit the application of the principle of prevention to those cases where it would be strictly necessary.
Gérald Bronner, Étienne Géhin, L’Inquiétant principe de précaution, Paris, PUF, 2010.
Marie-Anne Frison-Roche (Éd.), Les Risques de régulation, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po et Dalloz, 2005.
Philippe Kourilsky, Geneviève Viney, Le Principe de précaution : rapport au premier ministre, Odile Jacob, La Documentation française, 2000.
Daniel Gaïa, Pascal Nouvel, Sécurité et compagnies aériennes, Éditions du Puits Fleuri, 2006.
Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin), LATMOS, « Suivi des émissions de cendres du volcan islandais Eyjafjöll » 20/04/2010. Site Internet easa.europa.eu.
