The weather is known to be the aircrafts worst enemy. Are aircrafts really equiped against it?
Answers:
Aircraft defend against severe weather by avoiding it. Only a few research aircraft intentionally fly into severe weather, and all others put their resources into detecting and avoiding it. Detection methods include onboard radar and communications with ground-based radar and other weather sites. There are also pilot reports, by which one pilot who has encountered dangerous weather informs others.
Back in the 1970s a number of planes were lost to "clear air turbulence", which amounts to dangerous weather that gives no warning (other than possibly from pilot reports). The study of meteorology contributes to our ability to predict this kind of problem.
don't think so
oh come these people do the best they can
what do you want, windbreakers and lightning rod on the wings?? lol
theres no point worrying bout **** like this because theres nothing you can do at the end of the day so dont worry about things you cant control it just gives u brainache lol
When was the last time you heard about an airplane falling out of the sky in a thunderstorms? It doesn't happen often, but it is possible for an airplane to be damaged by a direct hit by lightening to a vital area, but just like buildings on the ground they are equipped with lightening rods to attract the lightening to less critical areas. With the exception of something like a hurricane hunter most aircraft do what they can to avoid really bad weather.
I think you should re-word your question: Aircrafts are known to be the weather's worst enemy. Is the global climate really equipped against it?
I have repaired many aircraft damaged by lightning, but have never seen one "returning an aircrafts factory caliberations to default status" (whatever that's supposed to mean.)
Yes. Severe winds, storms, hail, lightning, ice, snow, etc. All of Mother Nature's most spectacular activities can and have caused airplane crashes, but we have radar, and storm-scopes, and lightning strike detectors and lots of other modern devices that help our aircraft avoid or cope with potentially hazardous weather conditions.
And. A coast to coast flight through all kinds of weather conditions is still safer than the drive from home to the airport.
Lightning is not the problem to an aircraft that you might think it would be. There are many lightning strikes on aircraft every year, although most do not cause harm - this is because the lightning is earthed, as it is when it strikes a building or person.
On an aircraft, the moving control surfaces (ailerons, rudder, elvator etc) are earthed to the main airframe by braids, not unlike a smaller version of a car battery earthing strap.
In the event of a lightning strike on a moving control surface, the earthing strap conducts the strike to the airframe, because if it did not do so, there is a probability that as the electricty would jump across the gap between the surfaces (possibly within the hinge) and effectively welding the two together.
The consequence of this is not desirable - you may well lose control in one or more axes.
Only Air FOrce One is equipped to take anything.
Ouch! Many of your responders are partially right - especially the inputs that commercial aircraft have regulations prohibiting flight into known severe weather, have lots of ways to avoid it, and that it is absolutely safer to fly cross country than drive to the airport. However, there is still some hokum in a lot of your answers.
Aircraft are not grounded unlike old hot air baloons that used to trail a steel cable to the ground as a safety measure prior to landing. They do have electrical path connectors to make lightening go where you want it to go and stay out of places where you don't want it to go. Modern commercial aircraft have to be designed and tested to demonstrate the ability to absorb a lightening strike anywhere on the aircraft, pass it through solid structure (not wiring or fuel cell air for instance), and dissipate it back into the atmosphere, typically from trailing edges or special dissipation divices added for that purpose. Electronics have to be shielded to prevent the electrical charge from entering the circuitry. "Factory settings" may mean, in some cases, bare-bone back up modes in many critical computers, and reverting to them is not a bad deal at all. That is what they are there for. If a system is that critical to safe flight, it will be redundant and seperated physically and electrically.
The other major danger of bad weather is turbulance. Aircraft structure is designed and tested to a very heafty level of forces, ones that would pin you so solidly in your seat that you couldn't raise you arms, PLUS a 50% safety factor on top of that. Therefore, extreame turbulance is unlikely to cause structural failure. The turbulance experienced in many commercial flight incidents, while enough to harm passengers whom are up walking around, is usually a very small fraction of the actual capability of the aircraft. Another danger is hail. Engines and windscreens are designed to tolerate fairly big hailstones and keep functioning. Iceing is the last big hazard, and all modern aircraft have to have functioning anti-icing devices.
Everything in life is a trade. If you designed an aircraft to the worst possible condition (softball size hail at 500 MPH for instance) it would look a lot like an M-60 tank and would not fly. So while there is a lot of design safety, the biggest protection remains the operational rules that prohitbit flight into known severe weather. Commercial pilots take that seriously, and the ability to detect severe weather has improved many times over in the past 50 years. If an aircraft crashes today "from weather", the real truth is the actual cause is more likely pilot error - he did something stupid with the weather being a factor, like landing long on a short, snow covered runway.
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