Can a commercial airline fly past a super cyclone or the one like Katrina?

Question

How does hurricanes sffect 747 and A 320. ? How do the pilot know the storm and aviod. There was an accident reently canada where a 737 while landing caught fire due to lightning why?Thanks in advance for the answers

Answer 1

Wanna experience? God luck!

Answer 2

No aircraft should try to fly past a cycloe forget about super cyclone.In hurricanes there is no particular direction for the wind.It can twist the aircraft and break in to pieces.Pilot know about the storms though the weather radar or stormoscope fitted in the aircraft.The shape and size of the clod are depctied on the radar screen as a bright spot (red) along with the azimuth and range marking which helps the pilot to avoid it.Lightning occures due to the difference potentials between clouds.These potentials are few thousand Kvs.When it strikes the aeroplane the static discharger and bondings present in the aircraft are not enough to provide a easy path for discharge.The charge particles gained on the body jump from one control surface to another causing a spark.Which is the main reason to catch fire. Remember 1000s gallons of fuel are loaded in the wings of the aircraft.

Answer 3

Having flown once with the Hurricane Hunters out of Keesler AFB, MS I can attest to the violence of flying through a hurricane! There's no way that a commercial airliner would ever attempt to fly through one deliberately.

There is little to no chance that one would accidentally encounter one either. Even if they didn't have weather information available to them, a hurricane has a very distinct appearance from the cockpit of an aircraft and no pilot with an active brain cell would ever attempt to enter one -- except for the Hurricane Hunters and their WC-130 aircraft.

Lightning strikes are not all that unusual, actually. While pilots do try to avoid flying into conditions where lightning is probable it is not always possible to avoid it. Most of the time the lightning is dissipated harmlessly along the skin of the aircraft. On rare occasions it may pierce the skin of the aircraft with potentially disastrous results.

The WC-130 mission that I flew on was hit dozens of times -- possibly over a hundred; we lost count. An inspection of the fuel cells after the flight confirmed that we had had a fire in an empty fuel tank but the fire suppressant foam had done its job and prevented disaster.

Answer 4

Umm you may want to check your facts. Are you talking about the Air France A320 that landed at Toronto's Pearson Airport?
If so, the fire was post crash, & the accident was not due to a lightning strike, but pilot error. The aircraft was landed too far down the runway to be able to be safely stopped, & it overran the end of the runway, & ended up in a ravine just off of the airport property, leaking fuel from tanks that were damaged in the crash caught fire & destroyed the aircraft. No one died in that crash primarily due to the actions of the cabin crew who are often mistaken for nothing more than glorified waiters & waitresses, but in this case they really showed why they are there. This incident is related to your original question in this way. I am a pilot, & we have numerous resources to get weather information from. In addition to onboard radar the pilot of the Air France A320 apparently received a short report from the Air Traffic controllers on the weather conditions that the pilot was landing in. Unfortunately a very intense & localised Thunderstorm passed over the runway at the moment that the landing was taking place. We normally land our aircraft into the wind, but the storm caused the wind direction to reverse, & the visibility to go down. This wind reversal caused the aircraft to move down the length of the runway faster than the pilot(s) expected & the low visibility kept the pilot from properly seeing what was happening. We prefer to avoid storms like that while conducting a take off or landing, but this one came up too fast for the pilots to realise it, & there wasn't enough time for the controllers to pass on the information to the pilots either.
With the right info, & enough time to assess it, one option they would have had would have been to go around & attempt the landing after the storm passed, (which only took a few minutes).

Generally it is the policy of Air Carriers everywhere to avoid Thunderstorms completely, & while enroute to keep a distance of at least 25 nautical miles. Pilots get information about storms, & severe turbulance, from on-board weather radar, & regular weather updates from Flight Services. In the case of a major storm such as a hurricane, they can route around the storm, while enroute. Fortunately Hurricanes & Cyclones move slowly enough, & predictably enough that flights can be diverted around the storm even before the flight has departed, & in the case where a storm would be located over a flights destination airport, the flight would be cancelled altogether, of sent to an alternate airport.

In most localised rain showers the clouds are low enough that large commercial airliners fly far above them. They only become a concern for them during landings & take-offs, & only when the visibility is severely affected.
But Thunderstorms contain severe turbulance & can rip apart even the largest of commercial aircraft if they are flown into a powerful enough storm cloud.

Where lightning & aircraft are concerned, most normal ligtning strikes on an aircraft while airborn go unnoticed by the occupants. An aircraft can be struck several times, & the points where the stike occurred can be found with tiny burn marks, & pin holes found in the aircrafts skin.

Outside of all safety considerations, Commercial Air Carriers avoid storms, & their related turbulance as well as Clear Air Turbulance, for reasons of passenger comfort. Moderate to severe turbulance could be flown through safely by most heavy aircraft, but the ride would be nothing less than an ordeal for the passengers.

Answer 5

Flight Dispatchers are responsible for the route that their airline is flying. No flight dispatchers will ever dispatch an aircraft nearer than 200 miles from the center of a hurricane, no matter if the name is Katrina or Ulises..Because FAA recommendations no pilot can fly nearer unless they are designed to do so in a scientific flight.
Air Traffic Controllers will help all commercial flight to avoid the danger of flying near or in a suspected bad weather condition..Hope I helped...good luck

Answer 6

Pilots see storms and hurricanes on there weather radar. They always try to fly around lightenings and other realy bad weather. If there is no other option they can always dispatch themselves to an airport with better weather or delay the flight. Flying through realy bad weather is the last option. Modern aircrafts could probebly also fly above some of the storms. Johan

Answer 7

If the plane were to fly into a super cyclone, the strong winds would spin the plane around, and nobody would survive. Any way the 737's fire was also caused by the heat of the plane as it slows down.

Answer 8

caught fire due to lightning? lol. planes are manufacture to withstand lightning. i had experience with them. About the other part off the question is something that some crazy should try.

Answer 9

no not at all...no commercial airplane can handle such intense cyclones like katrina...considering the damage caused i feel it woukd be a milestone to fly at such climatic conditions....

Answer 10

through g-gps not c-gps which u used to