AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2017 - 91

P&E

WX WATCH

Hurricane encounters
Leave it to the experts
BY THOMAS A. HORNE

PROUD OF ITS TEAMWORK, Delta posted this FlightRadar24 image of Flight

302's departure on its News Hub website (http://news.delta.com/deltateam-flight-hurricane-zone-what-we-do).

IN DECEMBER, many of us are focusing our weather concerns on issues such as icing and cold weather operations.
But now is also a good time to review what has been this
year's noteworthy Atlantic hurricane season. At this writing in early October, there have already been 15 named
tropical storms and 10 hurricanes, of which five were
major-meaning they had winds of 137 knots or higher.
The worst damage was caused by the devastating major
hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.
Most pilots steer well clear of hurricanes, of course.
But there are some exceptions. The U.S. Air Force flies
its 10 beefed-up WC-130J aircraft right into hurricanes
to gather readings essential to forecasting a storm's path
and intensity. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration flies its Lockheed WP-3D Orions and
Gulfstream G-IVs on similar missions.
Civilian flights into tropical storms and hurricanes? Why
even think of it? And yet, on September 6, Delta Air Lines
chose to dispatch a scheduled flight from New York's John
F. Kennedy International Airport to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
It arrived as hurricane Irma was approaching the east coast
of Puerto Rico. Apparently, Delta's meteorologists were convinced that safety wouldn't be compromised. The Boeing
737-900ER landed in San Juan after flying through turbulence that the captain said "wasn't even bumpy until we got
close." Visibility for the landing was nine miles in light rain,
with surface winds of 28 to 36 mph.
A Delta statement said that the company's meteorology and dispatch offices "were prepared for heavy wind
shear, crosswinds, strong tailwinds, but it was no worse
than a summer thunderstorm in Atlanta."
Once at the gate, the airline crew did a 40-minute
quick-turn, loaded up with 173 passengers, and then
launched back for JFK as Flight 302. Eight minutes later,
the San Juan Airport was closed.
How did Delta pull it off? Real-time coordination
between flight crew and the meteorology and dispatch
offices, sharing of turbulence data via Delta's proprietary flight weather viewer app, and imagery from the
airplane's own onboard weather radar led the list of decision-making aids. It also didn't hurt that Flight 302 flew
in the gaps between the rain bands surrounding Irma's
outer perimeter. Still, it all sounds a tad risky. Outer rain
bands can bring tornadoes with them.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, I ran into
some tropical weather of my own on September 1. I had been
ground-bound with an Air Journey tour group in Taiwan for

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2017

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