LONDON, United Kingdom-As the airline ash fiasco is easing up after a week of major grounding of Europe's airlines, the International Air Travel Association[IATA] is squarely pointing a [middle] finger at European aviation authorities.
"It's a European mess. Lufthansa flight tests found not a single layer of ash on the fuselage or turbine blades. I wonder what the fuss was all about" said IATA boss Giovanni Bisignani in a press release.
Critics have come in support of Bisignani especially regarding the UK's decision.
"That Island was not even classified in the 'ash envelope' to begin with but they just decided to close their airspace" said Karl Duissberg a vacationist from Dusseldorf who was stranded at Heathrow.
This view was shared by Dan Koko a Nairobi Horticulturalist.
The 'ash' which devastated air travel was reportedly seen as far away as the Kuril Islands
"although our health minister was caught up in this madness forcing an extended stay in London i personally think flight should not be a priority for humans but perishables and commerce. I really sympathize with all the rotten Carnation" said Koko who speculated this had something to do with the forthcoming elections in Britain in a move by the Labour Party to show the electorate it cares.
Under fire, the European Aviation Safety Agency[EASA] based in Cologne, Germany vigorously defended it's overkill overreactions saying the ash from the Eyjafjallokull Volcano [glacier] could have have been worse and might continue till 2011 eventually sinking Iceland at around December 2012.
The agency issued a lengthy, detailed explanation that this might then be preceded by tsunamis which might be felt as far as Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and triggered by gigantic pyroclastic flows, as a result of the gravitational collapse of the eruption column which will melt all Ice in Iceland revealing the land
then melting that too and sinking it, or sinking it first then melting it IF the planes had not been grounded.
On Seeking clarification on the last part we got the response
"It doesn't matter in whichever order really. What's important is eventually this might have led to Iceland being wiped off the face of the earth-without a trace." said Dr.Fritz Pfeiffer a Vulcanologist for the agency.
He however hesitated to fully dismiss emerging reports that the latest Shuttle landing delays was caused by the presence of ash and Sulphur swept all the way to Kennedy Space Center airspace by the Polar jet streams thereby forcing Discovery to land at Cape Canaveral.
" We have been having a lot of Sulphur dioxide and ash in our skies lately.This leads to a global increase in Sulphurous acid concentrations in high level Cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity would reflect more incoming sunlight than usual thus cooling the entire planet until the suspended sulphur falls to the ground as acid precipitaion" explained Dr. Fritz.
" From there, it's a safe bet to place the blame on the weatherman after all NASA has more important things to do than scare the living daylights out of a perpetually terrified American Public." he added.
Mission Control meteorologist were angry and offended by Fritz's insinuations but not as much as the British Minister of the Exchequer and his Netherlands counterpart following the Icelandic finance Minister's recent off the cuff remarks.
The two countries which have been leading the push for Iceland to repay money owed to them were put off by the much cliched chain mail "you ask us for cash, we give you ash" right from the mouth of Arni M. Mathiesen after a press conference with Mathiesen sheepishly adding "we always know when the microphone is off".
Eneza
