Don't planes fly AROUND storms?

[Broomstick]

@Whack-a-Mole

Is there no communication with other planes in the (semi) near area at the time? I thought one important tool for pilots was the pilots ahead of them reporting on unusual things in their flight path. Granted the ocean is big but I suspect there were a number of planes en-route to/from Europe/Brazil.

Yes, pilots do talk to each other. It’s quite common.

But still…a modern jet liner breaking up these days? I thought those things were a lot stronger than they look.

Yes, they are. Modern airliners are very strong. They are not, however, invulnerable. Pilots make an effort to avoid the worst parts of storms because it is *possible *for the weather to bring them down even if it is unlikely most of the time.

Also, there are people who purposely fly right into hurricanes.

Yes, there. Those flights are also very carefully planned, do not take place in Airbuses, and are flown by pilots who are experts in that mission.

Flight 447 may have encountered weather inside a severe storm that exceeded the windspeeds and other attributes of some lower-level hurricanes. If they hit a tornado inside the storm conditions could have been extreme, much much beyond the usual.

Barring a severe failure in the airframe (missed cracks or something) I thought it would be very surprising for a plane to get knocked to pieces by a thunderstorm. No doubt the flight would be terribly bumpy and uncomfortable to downright scary for passengers but fall apart?

Unusual, yes, but still possible.

That or massive electrical failure of some sort so all systems shut down but again I thought the planes had redundancy for this.

They do.

Hell, in the story of the Gimli Glider it notes that once all power was lost a little turbine deploys that is “powered” by the air rushing through it sufficient to maintain hydraulic pressure. Again, something so utterly incapacitating on a modern jet like that seems incredibly unlikely (I know…unlikely thought it may be looks like “unlikely” may very well have happened in this case).

Also a good point, however, the Gimli Glider was flying in good weather and in daylight - Flight 447 was flying at night and in bad weather, both of which are added complications that might have been enough, combined with other factors, to doom the flight.

Just for your information - Air Transat Flight 236 was an A330 that ran out of gas mid-way over the Atlantic and glided to a safe landing in the Azores (supposedly, part of the conversation recorded on the CDR was one pilot saying to another something like “Well, those Gimli guys did it - we should be able to land this thing, too”). So yes, complete engine failure and/or electrical failure will not automatically bring down an A330. They were also flying at night, which can increase the chances of spatial disorientation for the pilots, and make finding things in a dark cockpit more difficult, but clearly that didn’t result in disaster. However, again, if I recall they weren’t dealing with bad weather on that flight.

In light of these and other episodes where large airliners have suffered significant failures yet landed safely I really have to think that the weather played a huge role in Flight 447, it’s a major difference between that crash and other emergencies that ended much better. Of course, I am not an aircraft accident investigator and I am willing to change my views after receiving more information.

Just talking out loud…I really hope they find the black box.

You, me, and a lot of other people.

[Richard_Pearse]

@brad_d

Because I would have thought that communication via satellites was (nearly) always possible; Magiver’s subsequent post suggests that it is.

@Cosmic Relief

How long do transoceanic flights spend where they don’t have two-way communication with anyone else? We know GPS covers pretty much everywhere, but what about weather data broadcasts?

They don’t spend time without communications, they have HF radio and use it to give position reports and receive clearances to and from ATC along the route they’re flying. They can also use it to get weather reports. But weather reports can be useful for strategic planning of your route, they’re not much use for tactical planning in the short term. Also HF has some inherent limitations that can make using it frustrating.

I think there’s too much importance being placed on the availability of communications with the ground here. ATC are there to provide separation with other aircraft, they’re not there to hold your hand while you deviate around weather. Likewise ATC radar is there to allow closer separation from other traffic, it’s not for steering you around weather.

The aeroplane has weather radar and the pilots on the flight deck will have the best picture of what is happening, even then, using a weather radar effectively takes practice, it doesn’t tell the whole story and it can paint a picture that might lead you to go where you shouldn’t.

Other aircraft can tell you what the weather was like for them, but thunderstorms are very transient and normally last about an hour. What was good weather for one aircraft may not be good anymore for a subsequent aircraft.

What all this points to is that the sole responsibility for navigating around weather ultimately rests with the flight crew, they have the tools and the knowledge. Information from other sources may be useful and any crew will gather additional information if they need to, but it’s up to them what to do with it.

On the subject of flying through hurricanes verses through a thunderstorm. A hurricane is a large scale weather pattern that contain various types of smaller weather. Flying through a hurricane per se is not necessarily a big deal. Flying through a thunderstorm is. A thunderstorm is probably the most danerous weather phenomenon an aircraft can encounter. It has all of the dangers of weather wrapped up into a neat little package. Severe turbulence, hail, icing, lightning, and wind-sheer. You can be flying through a cyclone and just be in lots of wind and rain. So flying through a thunderstorm is always to be avoided whereas flying in the vicinity of a hurricane just depends on the specific weather encountered (which often includes thunderstorms.)

You don’t fly through them, you don’t fly under them, and if possible, you don’t fly over them. The turbulence from thunderstorms can extend well above the visible tops of the storms.