For three weeks the toilets of French airline companies have been at the center of a genuine anti-terrorist combat undertaken with the greatest discretion.

What’s this all about? Well, you might remember those oxygen-masks that are supposed to drop from the panel above your seat on a jet airliner when cabin pressure drops for some reason. Ah, but what if you happen to be in the bathroom at the time? No worries, most advanced airliners have a system of chemically-fabricated oxygen located in that room’s false ceiling to take care of your breathing needs there.

Until now, that is. To the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that contraption in the bathroom is not just an oxygen system – it’s something there ready for cagey terrorists to set fire to, explode, and thereby bring down the plane. So it has to go.

Leaving aside for the moment here the technical validity of the FAA’s objection, the most impressive thing about this affair is the way that agency has shown it can impose its will on the rest of the world’s airliners. As Mme. Collet points out, there are 12,000 planes to which this directive applies flying for American and European companies alone, and many more beyond those that are based in Asia. Yet all of them – one assumes – want to have the capability to fly to the American market and therefore need to get rid of those bathroom oxygen devices. One reason it seems this matter is finally being brought to public attention in a French publication is that, surprisingly, the French are being particularly quick to accede to the FAA’s demands; whereas the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has left it up to national airline authorities to react to the FAA’s demands as they will, the French agency (the DGAC) decided at the beginning of the year to carry out the FAA’s instructions as quickly as possible.

OK, but where does that leave those unfortunates who find themselves caught in the bathroom during a depressurization? Such incidents are certainly not unheard-of: Mme. Collet cites here figures from the French pilots union that there have been 19 of them within the last eight months in European airspace alone, and when they happen, pilots know they’re supposed to descend as quickly as possible to an elevation where there’s enough air pressure for people to breathe normally (around 4,200 meters). But from the usual airline cruising altitudes of around 10,000 meters that takes at least three minutes or more – and, meanwhile, you’re certain to have people stuck in bathrooms, unable to breathe or really to do much at all (except hold on to that cabin’s roof) as the airplane finds itself in a steep dive.

At least they won’t be able to blow anything up, either. And that’s the important thing.

                          

Central to the European complaints had been assertions that the flight-bans were too extreme, that the ash really did not pose enough of a danger to justify the considerable economic damage that the bans caused – after all, a number of airlines actually went ahead and flew test-flights on their own responsibility (manned only by crews and observers, of course) up into the grit-cloud and everything seemed fine. Now the Czech business newspaper Hospodářské noviny reports on how Europe’s scientific community is finally getting its act together with some direct research aimed at setting firm norms for when it’s safe to fly in volcano ash, and when it is not.

Basically, scientists are getting into planes themselves and flying into the ash – in particular, a team of researchers sponsored by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, or the German Center for Air- and Spaceflight. That cloud may have moved on from the northern British Isles, but it’s still floating above the North Atlantic, and these scientists flew some 500km through it to make measurements and observe effects. They were even able to send someone to present their preliminary findings in Vienna to the 2010 General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union – things like rate of ash emission from the erupting volcano (3 tons of ash per second), speed of movement and disperson through the air, and the like.

It’s not at all a simple thing to try to figure out, as you might expect. As the DLR’s spokesman at the EGU congress, Dr. Ulrich Schumann, remarked, “A cloud of volcanic ash is not a passive phenomenon, it has its own internal dynamic.” But the ultimate point of the exercise is to build a better model to use to get an accurate picture of the safety situation for airline flights – and thereby of whether a flight-ban is justified or not – if there should be another eruption.

Or perhaps rather “when”: it seems that our friend Eyjafjallajökull is nowhere near ready to quiet down but is instead “intensifying.” Travelers be forewarned!

                          

A good place to go for a first comprehensive report is the coverage in Berlingske Tidende (Mess-Up in Cockpit Sets Off Danish Terror Alarm). The aircraft was presumably flying Norwegian vacationers – 186 passengers – from Bergen down to Palma de Mallorca, when personnel from the company charged with monitoring and controlling Danish civil airspace, Naviair, found they couldn’t contact that Air Europa flight. So they informed both the Danish air force and the German civil airspace authorities. The Germans also couldn’t get in contact with the airplane, nor could the Dutch, and the result was that a total of six fighter-jets (two each from Germany, the Netherlands, and France) scrambled within fifteen minutes to get to that flight and see what was going on.

We all know why an airplane these days that won’t respond to radio communication is a worrying phenomenon. But last May 1 everyone had particular reason to be concerned since (I would politely remind you) that was a historic day, the day of EU enlargement by ten new member-states, when among other things EU leaders were all gathered together to celebrate the event in Dublin. Was that where the terrorists wanted to crash? Or maybe Brussels, or Paris?

Of course, it all turned out to be nothing of that sort at all – or else you would have already heard about this! Things finally got under control when personnel in one of the French jets managed to get visual contact with the Air Europa pilots. The effect was basically along the lines of “Earth to pilots: Could you please rejoin society?”, as it turns out that the radio in the cockpit had been on all along, but none of the Spanish pilots had noticed that all that heavy commo traffic they were half-heartedly listening to (perhaps while concentrating on their Nintendo?) was specifically addressed to them! Naturally, they have been charged with neglect (and are presumably grounded), while the full investigation into the incident continues.

DID THE DANES PLAY IT ALL RATHER COOL?

Politiken adds some spicy details to the story (Silenced Flight Did Not Call Out Terror Alarm in Denmark). Yes, according to reporter Lea Wind-Friis (and maybe her name makes her particularly suited to be an aviation reporter, eh?), the Danish authorities didn’t issue a terror alarm over the incident, even as the Dutch, German, and French authorities did. This was despite the fact that the problem with lack-of-communication was first picked up when the airplane was in fact in Danish airspace. The Danish flight-control authorities also did not notify the police, which is what procedure prescribes if they think they are dealing with a hijacked aircraft.

In hindsight, they were right not to notify the police. They did notify the Danish air force, as I noted above – but it’s interesting that no Danish fighters scrambled. Why? Was it too late before the aircraft would be out of Danish airspace again? Or does Denmark just not have fighter assets available? What’s more, this accompanying article, published on-line by Politiken on the very same day as Ms. Wind-Friis’ piece, does say that there was a “terroralarm,” but if you read it closely (in Danish) you might be able to interpret that “alarm” as merely the notice the Danish airspace authorities gave to both the Danish and German air forces.

Finally, the Politiken articles collectively reveal that it took a full fifteen minutes of being escorted by fighter jets for anyone on board that 727 to notice that something strange was going on – and that it was in fact passengers looking out the window who noticed the jets. That must surely have been some intense Nintendo session – or whatever it was – taking place up in the cockpit! By that point, the renegade aircraft was already approaching Brussels.