Travellers expect their airlines to foot the bill for their enforced grounding. Airlines want governments to compensate them for their losses. Where are governments meant to find the money? Taxing travellers, presumably.

Iceland’s volcano has brought out the worst side of compensation culture. Only an atheist would dispute that the eruption was not an act of god – it is certainly beyond the powers of any government – so why do airlines and their passengers think they can claim reimbursement of costs from mortal entities?

The chief executives of eight airlines have already made their case for state compensation. What they really mean is that their finances are so rocky anyway they cannot sustain the estimated £130m a day cost of the flying ban.

But hopefully the days of governments supporting flagship carriers is over: now that airlines have been privatized – and mainly turned from loss to profit – they have to be self-supporting. If a volcanic ban on flights grounds them permanently, that is a problem for shareholders and banks, not for taxpayers.

Those would-be passengers that might suffer from an airline collapsing are saved from financial loss by using credit cards – though why a card company should have to insure buyers for using a failed supplier is another anomaly in the compensation culture that passes risk from consumers to corporations.

Governments may feel they have a public responsibility to send a naval taskforce to bring home stranded citizens – and may even charge them for the privilege – but their only liability in the current travel crisis is that the EU passed a law ordering airlines to compensate passengers unable to fly for reasons beyond their carriers’ control.

Why someone purchasing a £10 ticket – buying it because it was cheap – should then be entitled to hotels and food costing far in excess of that sum is inexplicable. What would happen if travel was frozen for, several weeks? Train and bus operators, quite sensibly, have no such responsibility for consequential losses. The legislation was a piece of consumerism gone mad.

The airlines could have insured against the small possibility of having to make such payments, of course, but the insurance industry has done itself no favours in accepting expensive travel insurance premiums then excluding from many policies the prospect of paying out in the current circumstances.

European governments should repeal the legislation that allows backpackers with cheap air tickets to spend days of luxury in top hotels at their airline’s expense. Saving the carriers from future costs would be a comfort but this might be a case for retrospective legislation. And if airlines’ finances are still unsustainable, it is time to consolidate as carriers such as Iberia and BA or KLM and Air France already have.

Assuming that Europe will not risk suing the Icelandic government for any funds it still has after the banking crisis, this is a loss to be picked up by passengers, insurers and airlines – not by taxpayers.

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