Pinatubo,

I never saw any demo of the British system, but it must have worked. The FDS system the French used was much later so it appears they had some time to improve the British idea outside of war. The jet engines were old and no longer serviceable for flight as I understood the contraption. As you can guess it cost a bunch of money if you had to divert to an alternate because of bad weather. The cost of putting up the passengers in a hotel and the loss of the return flight made FDS worth the cost to the airlines. For its time FDS did the trick, but soon the improvements in both ground based nav and cockpit instruments phased out this stopgap invention. I'm glad I saw it in operation. I never saw this system used in the USA.


More reading...

http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT3712542&id=AxY0AAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=fog+dispersal+system&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPAT4475927&id=3dE1AAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=fog+dispersal+system&printsec=abstract#v=onepage&q=fog%20dispersal%20system&f=false

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976JApMe..15.1226W