Bill
Good debate !!
An interesting note I found on the web regarding a 747 Singapore Airlines crash in Taiwan.
Questions are also raised about whether the aircraft should have been attempting to take off at all in the prevailing bad weather. Singapore Airlines follows Boeing's guideline of allowing takeoffs if crosswinds are lower than 55.2 kph. The airline claims that crosswinds were blowing at no more than 27.2 kph when flight SQ006 tried to take off. But a Taiwan Aviation Safety Council report stated that the winds were between 43.2 kph and 49.6 kph.
The Taiwanese carrier EVA Air had scrapped three flights shortly before the Singapore Airline crash, because crosswinds had reached more than 88 kph. While the Taipei control tower provides the most precise weather data available, the airport authority acknowledged that the information is not “real timeâ€â€”that is, it is dated, but the authority refused to say by how much.
Significantly, at Taipei and many other airports around the world, the pilot decides whether or not to take off in bad weather. Runways are only closed if pilots insist on flying in conditions that the airport authorities feel present an “immediate danger to the aircraftâ€. Airport operations are maintained even when wind conditions are higher than the safety levels recommended by aircraft manufacturers.
Obviously pilots are under pressure from airlines to maintain tight schedules and avoid costly delays. Hong Kong-based aviation expert Jim Eckes this week called for the procedure to be changed, insisting that it should be the responsibility of airports to shut down in extremely bad weather.
Eckes pointed out that the fatal crash of a China Airlines aircraft at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport in August last year also happened under typhoon conditions. He said that it was too soon to say whether the storm had played a role in the Taipei crash but the incident highlighted the problems bad weather could cause.
“My feeling is that the airport authorities should exercise the decision-making about their own airport—do they keep it open or don't they? Hong Kong airport says, ‘we stay open and the pilot can make his own decision'. In the United States, whenever you have a hurricane coming up the East Coast, all the airports are closed in its path.â€
Eckes pointed out that unlike the pilots, the airport authority has the benefit of advanced radar technology and other instrumentation on which to base a decision. “Pilots need help, especially in difficult conditions. There are turbulence or wind shear problems which the plane's system doesn't indicate,†he said.
