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Showing posts from March, 2022

Why winter weather is the most detrimental for flying.

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 The cold temperatures of places like Colorado are often accompanied by strong weather patterns that carry high winds. Alongside the winds can be freezing rain or large snowflakes, both of which can be difficult to deal with in an aircraft. For aircraft, two things are very important, being able to generate lift, and having a way, either visually or by instrument, to navigate the aircraft safely. Winter weather can inhibit both of these along with other undesired conditions.  To start off, freezing rain and snow are both water, which can introduce a variety of situations. This means that two dangerous conditions can occur during flight, flameout and icing. A flameout can occur when an engine ingests too much water or when sufficient icing in the engine occurs during operation, this "puts out" the engine and requires a restart, which may or may not be successful. Depending on when this occurs it can be very dangerous as an aircraft is very limited on what it can perform during

Looking at two major air traffic facilities with vastly different approaches

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 London and Seattle are two cities that are very well known across the world, in international travel they are both major hubs to and from their respective countries. However, their approaches vary greatly when it comes to performing the task of managing the aircraft to and from airports. One takes a hands-on approach while the other has managed to go completely digital.      Seattle Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) has a lot of factors to contend with when performing aircraft monitoring and guidance procedures. Its area of responsibility is between the Olympic Mountain range and the Cascade Mountain range which lends it some very difficult terrain management. When you add in high peaks such as Mount Rainier at 14, 416 feet, you have even more to contend with. As I said earlier, this tower performs handing of international flights. The tower also performs monitoring of military operations happening in its area to include live fire ranges, Boeing tests experimental aircraft, and