I read somewhere that our understanding of flying in/near clouds of volcanic ash is quite limited. We know from the BA9 Jakarta incident what an almost worst-ca

I read somewhere that our understanding of flying in/near clouds of volcanic ash is quite limited. We know from the BA9 Jakarta incident what an almost worst-case scenario looks like, but little more. The necessity to study it was simply not there - eruptions to far has happened in areas with fairly light traffic, so shutting down affected airspace had low consequences. If this eruption is going to last more than a few days more, keeping some of the worlds most busy hubs offline, there will be serious effort put into making flying under these conditions safe. An obvious part of the solution could be radars or lidars that can reliably see where this stuff is, and how dense, so flights can avoid it. Another could be coating for windows that can withstand the "sandblasting".