Fear of Weather-Flying Anxiety-Overcome Your Fear Of Flying!

                                               FEAR OF WEATHER



Does the thought of looming thunderstorms near an airport causes you great sense of anxiety? What about strong surface winds? The fact of the matter is weather will always be part of aviation. Since the birth of aviation man has been concern with weather. In the early years of flying we seen a lot more weather related accidents then today. One of the reasons today why weather
related accidents are rare is because of the improvement of new technology in forecasting weather, new technology with airplanes, better pilot education & training & better training with air traffic controllers. The biggest problem with weather today is the effect it causes on airline flight schedules. It causes chaos! As a direct result many flight crews may be on duty a lot longer then they anticipated. This results in crews being timed out meaning they max the amount of hours they could fly. This will result in a canceled flight. But for the crews already in the air, it could add to a long fatigued day.



But the good news are many new advance technologies in the cockpit that monitor the aircraft and keep pilots out of trouble. One example is GPWS Ground Proximity Warning System that sends alarm bells off if a pilot makes a mistake & fly to low or close to mountains while in weather. Another technology is wind shear. Wind shear is an unexpected shift in wind direction & speed causing huge updrafts & down drafts close to the ground. Wind shear has cause many accidents in the last 30 years mainly because we didn't understand it into the 1980's. Many of those initial accidents were blamed on simple pilot error into scientist discover a strange phenomenon occurring with wind patterns prior to those accidents.What we know is wind shear occurs near thunderstorms, mountain terrain, or temp inversions. The danger of wind shear is on approach or takeoff when the airplane is flying slow its venerable to those updrafts & down drafts. Aviation experts have finally gotten a good understanding of wind shear within the last 25 yrs and as a result most airports have an alert systems called LLWAS or wind shear radar systems to warn pilots in advance. Also most of the modern aircraft today build within the last twenty years also have a wind shear alert systems in the cockpit that warns you on takeoff or approach when wind shear is present. All airlines now have established procedure for pilots to get out of wind shear once its encounter.
The results are today wind shear accidents are now rare. The last one occurred in Dallas, Texas in the 1980's.

     (H=High Pressure & good weather)     (L=Low Pressure & bad weather)

So most peoples anxiety & fear of flying in weather results from their lack of being in control, or lack of understanding the industry. Lets look at an example. Lets say you're taking a commercial flight, and the ride is smooth. Then you see the seat belt light turn on, and the captain announces, "ladies and gentlemen," soon we will be approaching some choppy air. We would like everyone to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts. Simply hearing that there is going to be turbulence may make your heart race immediately.

Even though the airplane is safe, you end up feeling anxiety or traumatized. As a result you feel fear & felt out of control, regardless to the fact that their were no danger. Other areas of weather that give people high anxiety is fog. There are different types of fog, but the bottom line is airplanes fly safely through fog everyday. Its never usually a problem taking off. Sometimes it could be a problem for pilots landing mainly because of reduce visibility. However, pilots use other lighting such as runway approach lights as a good substitute to guide them in to the runway.

One area of weather I notice that give passengers discomfort or anxiety is strong gusty winds. Strong surface winds is a fact of life in aviation. The good news is that gusty winds happen just as much as it rains. Its an occasional event. However, pilots are trained to deal with it. In fact, pilots learn from their early days as a student pilot how to land a small airplane in a crosswind. For a passenger not used to flying, and seeing an airplane land in a crosswind it could feel unusual & make you feel anxiety. It feels like one landing gear wheel touches down first then the other. Thats because thats how its supposed to feel. The pilot is crabbing the aircraft into the direction of the wind. As the aircraft get closer to the runway, the pilot kicks the airplane nose straight by a combination of cross controls from rudder & ailerons. This may seem complex, but by time a pilot gets hired at a airliner he, or she made about 10,000 takeoffs & landings in strong crosswinds so they get good at it. Pilots will make still make hard landings from it from time to time. I never heard of an airplane crash from crosswind landing yet. So you can see weather is rarely a direct factor in accidents. The more you understand the basics of weather, the better chance you could reduce your fear & anxiety about flying.