181–190 of 204 posts
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The problem with that definition is that "prehistoric" is a lot more recent than people realize in the Americas.
Interestingly the Klamath people have an oral history of the eruption of Mount Mazama and formation of Crater Lake over 7000 years ago.
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The planes regularly face 300 MPH+ winds in normal flight because of their speed.
That's not evidence that an additional 180MPH would be harmless. For one thing, those 300MPH winds are normally only in one direction.
I've been on flights from Asia to the US with a 150+ mph tailwind in the jet stream making the ground speed 700mph+. However, from the perspective of the air frame, it's still just traveling at a normal speed relative to the air it's in.
During the cold war my grandfather flew bombers into the eyes of hurricanes to drop sonar beacons. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of this. The older bombers they flew were all manual controls (as opposed to fly by wire), which meant physical exhaustion from wrestling the plane into the storm was a major factor - so they'd bring extra fuel to be able to circle the eye of the storm for some amount of time to build up the…
The main wing spar on those bombers also had to be reinforced to support the weight of the crew's giant balls. Respect.
Commercial pilot here, currently flying transatlantic routes. I avoided Irma last week while flying to Buenos Aires (it was not this big yet). I have partners in San Juan at this moment, bunkered in the hotel. We see this as a crazy move, very well executed, but too risky for the plane itself (not so much for the crew). Let me explain, the metar and tafors (the airport meteorological reports we use) during the flight…
Commercial pilot here, currently flying transatlantic routes. I avoided Irma last week while flying to Buenos Aires (it was not this big yet). I have partners in San Juan at this moment, bunkered in the hotel. We see this as a crazy move, very well executed, but too risky for the plane itself (not so much for the crew). Let me explain, the metar and tafors (the airport meteorological reports we use) during the flight…
Stupid question: what about flying above the hurricane on the way back ? Possible ?
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As someone who has lived through some of the strongest hurricanes in recorded history you are wrong on multiple counts. Flying through the storm and the wall eye is dangerous and NOAA has lost planes to it. One of their hardened P3 had equipment and life raft ripped from their anchors [0]. There is definitely lightning and waterspouts during a hurricane. That is not reserved for thunderstorms. This was a flight to ev…
Non-rev refers to any non-revenue passengers. You're conflating NRSA (non revenue space available) with non-rev generally. There's also NRPS (non revenue positive space) and "must ride" flyers in that category. This flight was picking up airline personnel, not revenue passengers. Your having lived through hurricanes on the ground is entirely irrelevant to a discussion about the safety of overflying the hurricane. At…
Yes, so harmless that no one does it. NOAA has to use an extremely reinforced, highly maintained fleet of P3 Orions. You've mentioned repeatedly in your parent posts that hurricanes are harmless to planes when commercial pilots in this forum say they wouldn't do it without excellent weather planning.
> You need to plan your path carefully for the descent, landing, and takeoff. But at cruising altitude, hurricane winds are not a major safety concern.
Planes have all sorts of cruising envelopes. Gulfstreams are in the 40k feet. Commercial jets cruise at 25-35K foot band. And commercial turboprops (commuter shuttles) are in the 10-20k foot band. While the first 2 won't feel the gale force winds they can experience the updrafts as turbulence. Commercial jets fly in the lower stratum of the stratosphere. There is still weather phenomena at the height, just much less than the troposphere.
Finally, the captain will avoid a hurricane even if it doesn't really affect them. They may need to decend to a lower attitude for an engine flameout, for example. And why deal with the added complication of emergency landing during a hurricane.
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Stupid question: what about flying above the hurricane on the way back ? Possible ?
Depends how tall the storm is. Planes engines breathe air, and there is less air the higher you go, so there's a limit to how high you can go; roughly 10km for commerical jets (actually it's a factor of altitude and speed; at high altitude, you need to go at least a certain speed to get enough air into the engines, but if you go too fast the plane breaks apart). I think big storms are about 10km tall.
The point where they meet is called "coffin corner". It is really not a nice place to be: If you are in coffin corner, if you try to descend, you risk speeding up and breaking the plane. If you try to slow down, you risk stalling - although it is possible to recover from a stall, you cannot recover without speeding up.
It is generally advisable stop climbing before you box yourself in like that.
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Consider that they were carrying 170 people away from a hurricane that killed, among the millions of people that were on its path, a total (until now) of 11. If that single plane crashed, it would have multiplied by 15 the total death toll of the storm. I'm sure that the risk must have been quite low for the operation to make any sense.
Generally, after a disaster, the death toll is artificially limited to bodies reporters can actually count, before rocketing up as infrastructure comes back online
The extreme overestimate was ostensibly due to "double counting", which I find to be a wholly unsatisfactory explanation. With all the info that they collected about each person who was missing -- name, DOB, photos, ID numbers, where they worked in the building or who they were visiting -- how can they possibly double count 3000 people?
And you're saying that generally after a disaster it works exactly the opposite way: a low number initially which gets adjusted upwards. Interesting. Almost as if there was a desire to make 9/11 look even worse (as horrible as it was).
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That's not evidence that an additional 180MPH would be harmless. For one thing, those 300MPH winds are normally only in one direction.
The plane moves relative to the wind it is in. A 180mph cross wind, head wind, or tail wind only affects its ground speed. I've been on flights from Asia to the US with a 150+ mph tailwind in the jet stream making the ground speed 700mph+. However, from the perspective of the air frame, it's still just traveling at a normal speed relative to the air it's in.