Dance on a volcano

So now that the dust has settled (or at least drifted away) from the Icelandic volcano and most people are back from where ever they were stranded, what was the travel chaos all about?

Was the ash ever seriously in danger of turning jet aircraft into gliders or was the whole thing an over-reaction? Certainly when it kicked off, various "experts" were on the media saying that it wasn't safe to fly and everything was grounded. Then for the best part of a week the skies remained empty, and herculean tasks were undertaken for people to get back from places that they had only taken 2 hours or so to fly to at the start of their holidays.

Then financial meltdown for the Airline industry started to get discussed (although to my mind if your aircraft's not flying, you're not paying for fuel or landing duties?) and compensation was muted and hey ho "it's a much less dense a cloud than we first thought". Cue planes flying and everyone's happy.

I'm left with two thoughts. Firstly we've a long way to go on climate change, if the number of flights we take for an Easter break, are anything to go by. Secondly, if the volcano's big brother goes off, will that create dense clouds of ash that will put everything back on the ground??