In correct information is being reported by the broadcast networks in regard to whether the ash cloud “dissipated enough” to allow resumption of flights. In fact, what happened was the air control authorities were more or less forced to back down at the Monday meeting in Madrid.

The ash did not dissipate “enough” to allow resumption of flights. ** Instead, airline, government and other officials pressed their case Monday in Madrid that the closed air space policy was too much of a blunt force instrument to use for what could be minor danger. The airlines argued that they had flown test flights into the ash without difficulty and that there were flight procedures they could use to avoid flying through the ash. They won their argument against the massive economic and personal hardship being imposed on the public and businesses by the shutdown.

The policy announced after that Madrid conference amounts to a reversal of the actions taken in the UK and by Eurocontrol, the European wide air control authority. Instead of “wait and see”, the policy now is fly, watch and reevaluate. The airlines and their pilots believe they can operate safely and, further, that the risks, such as they are, do not merit closing airports and air space.

What is being put in place is a more moderate plan. Aircraft will fly through the ash where it is believed to be safe, underneath it when necessary and over the ash when going to outlying airports. None of this should mean that there is no danger. There is always danger in sending an aluminum tube through the air at more than five hundred miles an hour. It does mean that the airlines believe there should have been more careful assessment before shutting everything down.  They think the risks going forward are manageable.

Doug Terry, 4.19.10

**The use of this phrase appears to have been drawn from wire copy, such as AP or Reuters, since it also cropped up in a report filed by one of the junior network reporters from London who files for reports carried on local stations and broadcast by WUSA-TV, in DC.

(CBS/AP) After five days in which nature brought the jet age to a halt, European officials agreed Monday to let air traffic resume on a limited basis, giving hope to millions of travelers around the world stranded by ash from a volcano in Iceland.

Three KLM passenger planes left Schiphol airport in Amsterdam on Monday evening during daylight under visual flight rules bound for New York, Dubai and Shanghai. An Associated Press photographer saw one jet taking off into a colorful sunset, which weather officials said was pinker than normal due to the ash.

New predictions show the ash cloud receding Monday night and into Tuesday so that air corridors can be gradually opened, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.

FROM THE NY TIMES, 4.20.10

....the head of the International Air Transport Association said before the announcement of a partial lifting of the aviation ban on Monday that “the decision Europe has made is with no risk assessment, no consultation, no coordination, no leadership”. The industry group’s director general and chief executive, Giovanni Bisignani, went further, saying that the crisis is a European embarrassment”and a “European mess”.

 It took five days to organize a first conference call of the European transport ministers, Mr. Bisignani said, and with 750,000 passengers stranded, “Does it make sense?”