EDITORIAL: Crisis in European skies

The volcanic ash that spread over the skies of Europe exposed the weaknesses of globalized societies. The affected nations at first tried to deal individually with what was actually a collective crisis.

We cannot deny they were slow to determine the nature and extent of damage and come up with plans for concerted action. In this age of rapidly growing traffic of people and goods, crisis control is a challenge not only for Europe.

The huge volume of ash spewed by a volcano in Iceland shut down airports around Europe and threw international flights off schedule. The volcano may yet erupt again, and business travelers and people planning overseas trips for the holiday-studded first week of May are being left in limbo.

Globalization today is supported by the Internet and high-speed mass transportation by air. But volcanic ash that gets into aircraft engines can cause all sorts of trouble. To prevent accidents, European aviation authorities ordered the closure of airports.

Obviously, safety must come before profit. But globalization presupposes mass distribution of goods and round-the-clock movement of people.

The suspension of these activities gravely impacts the global economy. Delays in the shipment and delivery of materials put manufacturing companies in a bind. Failure to rush medical supplies to people in need can be a matter of life and death.

Aviation authorities need to make a swift judgment on the safe timing for reopening the airports, and decide what alternatives should be made available while the airports are closed.

But the authorities in the affected nations apparently decided to err on the side of caution and continued to keep their airports closed. And although the distribution of volcanic ash required close monitoring to determine timely countermeasures, the authorities were wanting in this respect, causing considerable distress to stranded travelers who had to camp out at airports.

The authorities' judgment was also questioned by airlines and airport operators that kept losing huge sums of money every day.

It became obvious that the affected nations could not handle the situation effectively unless they acted in concert, and an emergency meeting of the transport ministers of European Union members was held Monday.

Japan is as much a volcanic nation as Iceland. There are many volcanoes in fast-growing Asian nations, too. We have worked together with other countries on measures against earthquakes and lava flows, but there is as yet no collective action plan presupposing a volcanic eruption in Asia endangering the heavily traveled skies with volcanic ash.

Our problem will be the same as Europe's when we are forced to suspend air traffic for safety reasons.

Taking the confusion in the European skies as our cue, we propose that the government invite our Asian neighbors to discuss various contingency plans, such as what protocol to follow to reopen airports and how to secure railway, seagoing and other alternative means of transportation.

In this globalized era, volcanic ash is only one of the many problems we could be stuck with and be unable to handle on our own, like epidemics and climate change. Our challenge is how closely and well we collaborate with other countries.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 21