The Dark Cloud in the Sky

17Apr10

The sky looks as blue as always here in Sweden, but some 6000 meters up there is a big cloud of ash from Icelandic volcano eyjafjallajökull, that covers most of northern and central Europe. All big airports are closed. Tens of thousands of flights have been cancelled and millions of travelers are stranded. That’s one pesky cloud.

Scientist claim it will most likely be over in a matter of days, but if we’re unlucky it could go on for weeks or even months. I wonder what several months with no air traffic in Europe will do to the world economy. The airline industry is losing 200 million dollars a day according to The International Air Transport Association. How bad is that for the big airlines? One analyst put it this way, “if it goes on for a week it begins to hurt, at the moment, it’s a headache”. And after a few months it’s like a coma?

It’s ironic that an Icelandic volcano is the source of this threat, the nation that has suffered the most from the financial crisis. They’re practically bankrupt and people are emigrating to avoid the huge taxes needed to pay the nation’s debts. This is almost like payback for that – only the cloud should have gone west instead, but they probably feared a class action suit if it reached the USA.