I haven't been following too closely, but apparently that Air France jet crashed off the coast of Brazil by going through some terrible weather.
Here is something interesting: Most commercial airliners have no access to ground-based weather reports. To put it simply, there is no "Weather Channel" for commercial airliners to tune into. (Although private jets do have that technology via an XM-radio style weather gadget.)
To sum it up, commercial airline pilots have (1) the radar in the nose of the aircraft, and (2) reports from other aircraft to rely on. That's it.
Not entirely true; the pilots recieve a flight plan that has the national weather as well as a outlook of weather for their entire flight.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the weather patterns could change in the course of a long flight thus putting the flight and crew at possible risk?