What is the reason behind airlines being so over cautious about the icelandic ash cloud?

This volcano has erupted before and given off ash for months at a time. Now the last 2 years the same draconian measures have been taken. Is there another agenda running here?What is the reason behind airlines being so over cautious about the icelandic ash cloud?
The Civil Aviation Authority are the ones who tell the airlines when to fly or not and mostly the airlines are not wanting to stop - you need to study the news more carefully
If you stand in front of a jet facing the nose, the side of the engines you see is called "intake". Their job is to suck the air into the engines. When airplanes are airborne, the inward force of the air getting sucked in will be higher, and that's why you see similar news on television "plane lands in Hudson river, after it struck a fleet of Canadian geese and the birds got sucked into the engines". When volcanoes erupt, the cloud will be all over the atmosphere to upto an altitude of several thousands of metres. Any foreign particles which enters the intakes can possibly cause engine failures. They'll tear the engine down. Once the engines are shut down, you'll lose all the thrust. You'll have to declare "mayday" and get the nearest possible landing site within gliding distance. Click the link below, and you'll read one such interesting incident of a 747 in which all the four engines got damaged because of volcanic ash, and at last they made a safe landing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Air…What is the reason behind airlines being so over cautious about the icelandic ash cloud?
These days there is much more known about the affects of volcanic ash on aircraft engines. In the past it was assumed that if your aeroplane survived passing through an ash cloud then it was alright. We know better now.

They do not always suddenly stop and make the aeroplane fall out of the sky (sometimes it happens, but rarely). The ingestion of the stuff makes engines suffer from very bad accelerated wear which CAN cause them to suddenly fail at a time and place where you wouldn't want that to happen.



Airlines could fly through the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud but would have to strip down and clean the engines afterwards to prevent later catastrophic failures. It's cheaper in the long term to stay on the ground until the hazard has passed. Some airlines, like Ryanar take the short-term view and just want to keep their income flow going now, or gamble and pass on the engine troubles to next year.
Volcanic ash is extremely dangerous to aircraft, as numerous encounters have shown. In aviation, prudence, caution, and conservative policies are what keep the industry safe. Until a truly safe threshold level of volcanic ash (if any) can be established, completely avoiding the ash is by far the safest course of action.



If you want to fly through ash on your own, go ahead. The investigation of your crash will add useful information to the sparse knowledge currently available on the effects of volcanic ash on aircraft.What is the reason behind airlines being so over cautious about the icelandic ash cloud?
Volcanic ash is glass. In large enough amounts it will tear up a jet engine. Smaller amounts will foul air filters of piston aircraft and will stall jets. The ash can block radio communications and mess up radar.



Go find some volcanic ash and dump it into your car's air intake and see how draconian these measures really are.
@ StanGace They also have a movie for that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxhiJnhI-p4
Cause this happens (and they're lucky the engines restarted)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Air…
Engines want air not rock %26amp; dust. Same as your lungs. Remember 9-11 and people covered in concrete dust? Bad to breathe. Now put a jet engine in the same stuff? Get the Idea now?
the sandblasting effect and The last time the Eyjafjallaj?kull volcano erupted in 1821...
Lawyers.