The blanket grounding of aeroplanes across Britain caused by the eruption under Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull glacier has attracted criticism from many, BA’s Willie Walsh among them, but a new survey suggests most of the British public think the closure of British airspace was a justified precaution.
68% claimed that the grounding was necessary, with a further 39% confident that it is now completely safe to fly. Only four percent feel that no cautions were needed at all, and 22% feel that flying would have been safe if certain precautions had been taken, such as flying under the ash cloud (whether or not this would have been a feasible course of action to take).
This appreciation of the precautionary grounding of flights belies an incredible number of travel arrangements that have been disrupted. 13% claim to have been personally affected by the disrupted travel; 66% claim to know someone (excluding themselves) who has been affected by the disruption.
Over the time of the survey being carried out, between April 20th to April 21st, 61% of those personally affected or known to have been affected were still stuck in the UK or abroad waiting for their flights. 16% of travellers had cancelled their arrangements, either in or out of the UK. But for the 19% who were no longer waiting and had made alternative travel arrangements, it was the price of alternative means of transport that became an issue – 36% complained that the new arrangements were ‘not reasonably priced’, compared to only 22% who thought they were reasonably priced (42% did not know, possibly because they had only third-hand reports of their friends’ or relatives’ delay).
As the anger grows over the cost the delays will cause to airlines and passengers alike, and the extent to which airlines are themselves responsible, and with most being either directly or indirectly affected, it seems that the majority of the public have not seen the last of Eyjafjallajökull’s mighty cloud – even if they have managed to make it back to British soil.
