Why are plances unable to take off in the fog?

Question

If planes can land and take-off in the middle of the night, why are so many flights out of London being cancelled because of a bit of fog?

Answer 1

dont know about plances, but i think the lights can cut thropught eh dark of a night but fog is harder and dangerous and it may freeze??

Just a guess?

Answer 2

Planes can take off at night and contained in the fog. it actually relies upon on what they're rated for and what the runway is rated for. If the two are rated so-noted as CAT3 then the aircarft, the pilot(s) and runway are qualified for minimal visibility take off and/or landing. In detrimental visibility the latter happens on so-noted as ILS (tool landing equipment) linked to the motor vehicle-pilot and, in fact, the laptop lands the airplane all a thank you to while the fee is decreased to approximately 40 knots (from a hundred and twenty knots landing velocity!) while the motor vehicle-pilot will disengage and the pilot will would desire to steer manually. Others have responded why mild does not shine in the process the fog, I won't repeat that. i'm a game pilot license holder. i'm able to fly VFR (seen flight reference) throughout day and night. yet i can't fly while the visibility is far less that 4 kilometers. each so often the tower controller supplies me permission to fly with lesser visibility below the SVFR (particular seen flight reference) rule. yet in no way in fog.

Answer 3

By law most aircraft require a minimum of 500 feet visibility before they are allowed to fly for safety reasons. Nothing more frightening thatn hurtling down a runway a 100 miles an hour to see something appear in the fog that shouldn't be there! The worst aircraft disaster ever happened At Tenerife Airport Santa Cruz, Spain on March 28, 1977 and involved two aircraft colliding - this was due in part to the terribly foggy conditions that day. 574 were killed.

Answer 4

Most planes get airborne at around 130 mph or 200kmh. When fog reduces visibility, the pilots can't see to keep the plane on the runway until it gets airborne. On a clear night, the runways are lit and the pilots aim for the middle of the two rows of lights. Take my word for it, you don't want to be on a plane taking off in the fog. And you certainly don't want to be in a plane trying to land in the fog.

Answer 5

They can take off and land - but the gaps between each take off or landing needs to be longer (for safety reasons) both at night and in fog - hence flight cancellations. Safety is more important than being home for Christmas.

Answer 6

They can take off and land safely, but the cancellations are due to the fact that the airtraffic controllers are insisting that the gap between planes taking off, and those landing, has to be doubled due to the dangers of them not seeing other taxiing aircraft on the ground, so ther are now less planes moving at anyone time, this means that about half of the flights have to be cancelled

Answer 7

Basically, they can, but the Air Traffic Controllers need to have more time and allow longer between flights.
Heathrow is already running at something like 98% capacity,,, so the only way to allow more time between flights is to cancel the domestic flights.
International flights are/were still landing and taking off....

Answer 8

An additional problem with freezing fog is that it can cause ice build-up in the engines of aircraft queued for take-off; this ice can then be shed into the engine core during initial flight, damaging compressor blades, etc... has been known to bring aircraft down! Airports in colder climates have sufficient anti-icing ground equipment to deal with this problem, British airports aren't quite so geared up for it, and Heathrow has insufficient time between flight-slots for proper ant-icing procedures anyway.

Answer 9

Taking off & landing is not the problem in fog.The gaps are though
You cant park the plane above London,while you wait for a slot

Answer 10

I would hardly call the pea souper surrounding Heathrow "a bit of fog".
Safety is imperative.
Better to get there late than never at all.