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| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
What exactly in his post was wrong? As far as I can tell he hit the nail on the head. Thunderstorms and aircraft don't mix. No matter how sophisticated, how large and how expensive your weather radar is. I could pull up hundreds and hundreds of accident examples.
Also, a large majority of pilots (ESPECIALLY those flying GA aircraft) are, in fact, stupid. I worked at a flight school in Van Nuys CA, (busiest GA airport in the United States) for 2.5 years and got to witness the stupidity first hand. Really, it scares me to death who they give pilots licenses to these days. |
His gross misinterpretation by talking about general aviation planes having wings ripped off and such was just out to lunch. Most trainer aircraft are certified in the Utility category, which no transport category jets are certified to. So based on that the acceptable G loading before failure in a cessna 172 is far higher than that in a 747 or 777 (almost twice the G loading infact). The larger planes have far more weight to be moved around, but they also enter the vertical air columns far more quickly which in turn causes more stress on the airframe. The Cessna 172 would never get into the really crazy parts of the storm either, microburts yes, but never into the extreme hail, up and down drafts associated with the stuff around 20,000 - 30,000ft.
I never argued that Thunderstorms aren't hazardous to aircraft. I just disagreed with the blatant over dramatization of "ripping wings off". How many of the posters here have flown at 35,000 feet and had to dodge cells, or how many have used weather radar to pick their way through a squall line? I'd dare say few if any, yet you're all talking as if you've been there and done that.
Also Van Nuys isn't the buiest GA airport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoeni..._Valley_Airport
Maybe the busiest airport carying porn stars in and out of the area.
I've flown into LAX a few times and the TCAS is sure a lot busier in many other areas. The New York Trecon airspace is absolutely insane to work under with arrivals for La Guardia, JFK, Newark, white plains, etc etc all funneling through the same space.
The second part that I found amusing was that he said that certain planes couldn't fly in weather beyond a sky condition of FEW or SKC, which means few or sky clear for clouds. Those planes certainly can fly in overcast and broken conditions. Certainly Broken 25,000 is a lot nicer weather than few @ 200, few @ 500, few @ 700.
I guess to close, I just took offense to the stupid pilot comment, coming from someone that had posted many inaccuracies.
Anyway, maybe some real world experience would open your eyes to what things are actually like. Let me know when you've got a couple of years flying in the flight levels in large aircraft under your belt and we can exchange war stories then.
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