WSJ: How one airline avoids the ash clouds

Scott McCartney reports on how Alaska Airlines has been coping with navigating around volcanic eruptions in Washington and Alaska for decades. The airline gives specific pilot training and carries out computer modelling to accurately predict ash trajectories.

"In light of the unprecedented disruptions to air traffic, it is clear that more effort needs to be undertaken to establish a global safety risk framework for routinely determining safe levels of operation in airspace contaminated by volcanic ash," the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations-chartered agency that sets rules for international flying and established a system to track volcanic ash in 1987, said in a statement last week.