Over-reaction: it's so hot right now.

Unless you've been dead for the past week, your life has been, in some form or another, affected by the ash cloud. Whether it has cancelled yours or a loved ones travel plans, put you out of a job temporarily, or just taken up more of the news than you had hoped, it is clear that this has emerged as one of the biggest stories of 2010 thus far. Never before has airspace been closed for this long. Not even after September 11th. Now we all know that I have some strong feelings about people's perception of flying and the flying process, but this has volcanic ash stuff is ridiculous.

People are calling the handling of the situation an 'over-reaction'. This is not verbatim, but you have people high up in the british conservative party and airline companies saying stuff such as, "the airspace should not have been closed due to a lack of understanding of the affects of ash cloud on airplane engines". That what was done was "unnecessary and costly". Pardon me? Since when was gathering more information about an unknown subject "unnecessary and costly"? Would they rather have blood on their hands or err on the side of caution? When people's lives are at stake, I think the answer is obvious. What is 6 days of our lives to just be a little bit cautious? And i'm speaking as one of the affected ones - I'm meant to fly to Cape Town later today. Sure, I'd love to fly and get to Cape Town; after all, i've heard its one of the best cities in the world. However, I wouldn't want to get there at the expense of my life. I think that sounds reasonable.

This whole aftermath is a prime example of what is going wrong with this world. You have people with no scientific experience (read: airplane CEOs, political leaders) telling the CAA (Airport authority) and british government that they need to be held accountable for their actions. Held accountable for protecting human life? Oh, so we're gonna issue them medals? Cool. Oh, wait. No. You mean hold an investigation and play on the hearts of society. Of course you would have handled things differently if you were in charge. And obviously, you're saying all of this once the matter has been taken care of. Convenient. And this is just my point. Someone is always looking over our shoulders telling us how to do a job that they have no idea about. They just know that every situation has a political angle and they're right there to capitolise. Sad. Now, I would call THAT an over-reaction. Let's look at the bottom line: No lives lost, we're flying again and we were able to update our standards for volcanic ash concentration. All in all, I would say that it was handled successfully, so why all the scrutiny?

Everyone just needs to chill out and stop over-reacting.