Airline emergency return ORD, hail broke windshield

[3WE]

Not only am I an amateur aviation expert, ranked higher than Kit Darby (by a highly-respected insider), I am an amateur meteorologist and trained storm spotter.

Aeroplanies and Thunderstormies are interesting topics. Sometimes windshields are broken. Other times airplanes are spit out onto the ground. And extremely often people go to social media to highlight improvisational cowboy idiocy and wanton disregard to the AIM-recommend 20 mile clearance from Cbs.

Example of the last item: https://youtu.be/D5CLNC1kPsQ

Repeating- I have a creepy memory of a special towering cumulus a tad north of DFW…

Hail, microburst, surged JT-8Ds on DC-9s…heck, even iced over pitots followed by relentless pull ups…

Aviation Typists Monthly once indicated that operations do indeed continue in spite of thunderstorms affecting the terminal area. I tend to believe them.

PS: I also have Red Cross First Aid training if anyone needs medical advice.

[LH-B744]

Our one and only 3WEie

A320.

avherald, thank God. Now I know that we talk about the same topic, a real topic, no jokes. Adults talk about aviation.

But who on Earth would call my friend 3WE a junior member , if not you.

Airbus A320. Not really my favorite a/c type. But nevertheless almost everybody owns such a jet:
American Airlines, United Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, ..... ....

And I still love my favorite airline because here we have worldwide (?) one of only a few CEOs or even the only CEO (?) who knows the A320 really really good:
Lufthansa CEO and active Flight Captain (Airbus A320) Carsten Spohr.

If you ask me, Spohr has to stay with the Lufthansa as a CEO at least for the next 10 years!

In my eyes "here at Lufthansa" (that's how I call my favorite airline) we never had a CEO, who is
1. so young, Chief Captain Spohr is only 12 years older than me
2. so able to build the bridge between aviation as a profession and not only the long lasting customers, but he stands infront of a German TV camera and asks all people who like to fly in Germany
for patience, almost on his knees.
3. In day-to-day business, Spohr is humble, almost invisible. I'd say Spohr follows the steps of Wolfgang Mayrhuber (22.03.1947-01.12.2018_): active engineer/pilot, then LH CEO,

and then Lufthansa Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender.

To make a long entry short, for A320 you should rather ask Chief Captain Spohr.

I am rather 737, 757, 767 and... 747.

Probably one of the youngest jetphoto forum members who still owns the 747 as my avatar (?) .

[Not_Karl]

Btw, who was it? Who reactivated this topic?

Our one and only 3WEie

What was the a/c type back then?

A320.

[LH-B744]

As usual, par for the course. This is a prime example of what a flightsim and keyboard pilot knows about meteorology and real world piloting.

Hm. As this is a warmed up topic, do you remember which a/c type we talk about?

PS: The threadstarter was here this week, but Kent obviously didn't quite remember that he once started this topic.
Which is a well known phenomenon, I can say, I also know something like that.

[LH-B744]

Aufgewärmte Liebe ist nur halb so gut wie echte Liebe.
Or what women say when you encounter her again after 20 years.

Back on topic.
So, someone has decided to warm up this topic, which in three weeks has its 2nd birthday? I just wonder if I hate this platform for this behaviour or if I rather have to love it for warmed up cookies.

Btw, who was it? Who reactivated this topic?

"hail broke windshield" . I'm not completely back on topic since Kent Olsen has opened it in 2020.

What was the a/c type back then?

[3WE]

An interesting write up:

Hurricanes tend to top out at 30K, but the article’s word choice is that overflying is dangerous.

Edit edit, direct link.

https://simpleflying.com/flying-over-hurricanes/

Edit: iPhone copy paste works bad. A Google search for “How tall is a hurricane” hit on airliners not flying over them at simpleflying.

[3WE]

This looks fun: “We are flying aeroplanies through hurricanes.

Disclaimers:

I really don’t know how tall hurricanes are (US thunderstorms occasionally blow aircraft ceilings away). This may be a big nothing.

Video from “hurricane hunting” L-188s at lower altitudes show reasonably OK rides except near eye walls.

The PR aspects are interesting, including the “we got this”…versus a serous, “jet aircraft are able to safely fly above the storm, our flight crews strictly adhere to all safety protocols and regulations.”

[kent olsen]

Well your right I didn't check further to see what the wx was and the time of day. I just remember telling my crews that "you are up here by the grace of God, I don't see any feather on your wings so fly safe and bring the aircraft back to earth on one piece because it's not the fall that hurts it's the sudden stop at the end".

I remember years ago flying out of Chicago (ORD), departures where to the east. A UA flight asked Departure for a turn away from wx ahead over the lake. He was given "standby". After the third "standby" he said "UA flight xxx is turning to a heading of 360, deviating for wx". No response. Sometimes YOU need to take control of the situation.

[BoeingBobby]

No hail, not at +14°C (57°F).

As usual, par for the course. This is a prime example of what a flightsim and keyboard pilot knows about meteorology and real world piloting.

[LH-B744]

ORD is EDDL minus 7? So, for what do we look on that Sunday. Mr Olsen mentioned hail. But that is not what me and my captain had to read preflight. I rather think about something like METAR TAF. On that sunday mornin? Let me assume 0600 ORD time, which is 1300 Lohausen time, and 1200z . Okay, now I can look that up.

Hm. I assume that was the wrong time. Or, as Mr Olsen said, the hail started not on the rwy at ORD, but when he was in the air for several minutes. This is the METAR which I have just found:
KORD 181200Z 21008KT 9999 OVC085 14/01 Q1014 .

No hail, not at +14°C (57°F). But I believe Mr Olsen. I live in Germany, so my source is never, never that precise than Mr Olsen. Again the comparison between my prototype,
Flight Captain C. Sullenberger III
and what the NTSB tried to tell him. His answer was: 'You have not been on board.' . That's correct.

Finally the NTSB had to admit, that a simulator never is able to depict the whole truth. And why do I have Cactus 1549 so good in my mind. I own the Blu Ray of the Clint Eastwood movie
(USA 2016), and for the first time, I watched it in English, a few days ago. No comparison to the German version. Finally, the GPWS does no longer talk German!!
Who on Earth and who translated that movie, thought that the GPWS in a domestic flight, in the USA, between La Guardia and Charlotte Douglas Intl, would talk German?!

The English version avoids that mistake. Too low terrain, pull up, pull up, pull up, pull up. Sullenberger must almost have been deaf after he was successful with his
forced water landing. Again, my highest respect!

Back on topic.

[LH-B744]

No comments on this one? I thought you were supposed to find this kind of wx on the radar and then deviate at least 20 miles around it?

I can remember asking the tower in Oklahoma city for 5 minutes on the runway to look at the radar and come up with a route around a line of wx, "approved". Then a descent into Indianapolis and asking for a deviation, "unable". Finally I told my FO turn right and told ATC we are deviating to the right.

Hey 3WE, what do we say, here at "my airport" it still is dark night, too early for breakfast. So, I'd almost say "Good night", but in Germany you only say 'Gute Nacht' to really good friends, or your family, and only when you almost sit on the edge of your bed, an hour or half an hour before you lie yourself down. I have not reached yet that point..

Back on topic.

I just try to remember that year when I wrote too much so that this platform no longer called me a Junior member.
Not one year after I joined this platform, and nobody called me a junior, afaik.
But Mr Olsen still is promising. And obviously he has the same rule in his head as one of the men which I call a Flight Instructor:
Flight Captain Chesley Sullenberger III .
First, fly that aircraft. Second, navigate. Third, and only if you have time enough, Communicate.

Mr Olsen, I don't remember the ORD weather of October 18th 2020, and you don't provide a link for that. I am able to look that up, but aren't you faster?

What do we speak about?

You talk about your F/O, so I assume that the weather data contained something which I also would like to avoid, something which also an aviation enthusiast on his passenger seat would not like to fly through.

[3WE]

Yes...in the early 1980s I lived a few miles SW of DFW...went to the grocery store and looked at what I ASSUMED were mundane PM airmass towering cumulus to the NE...I think I heard a rumble of thunder...

The planes on final were not giving it 20 miles of clearance, even though that was in the AIM at the time.

[kent olsen]

Well hail is a solid so it is influenced by the wind. If the thunderstorm is just sitting there, you could have hail and turbulence all around it. But it the storm is moving you need to stay away from the over hang as well as the downwind side. In different parts of the world I've seen cumulus grow into towering cumulus in 15 minutes, lot of energy there.

[3WE]

I’ve been parlour talking too long. These things happen a couple of times a year. I call BS on 20 mile clearance, it’s way to easy to see FlightAware and radar and look and listen...those sources aren’t super accurate, BUT, they are accurate ENOUGH to see that airplanes routinely get kind of intimate to storms...maybe penetration is rare, but flights get pretty close to storms when the storms get close to an airport. (See footnote)

I guess hail is too fleeting; however, ground based radar does seem to be capable of hail detection- I think we might ask if better real time communication might be in order. Sometimes, these encounters occur away from ground radar.

Footnote: A favorite- a 737 is cleared to take off into a tornadic thunderstorm and passes about a mile from a tornado. The NWS had a warning on the storm. This video is inside the outer marker (just for reference). Not only that, but the airport ain’t busy and has another runway, and I think plenty of open airspace to turn the guy, but, hey, that would deviate from the r-nav departure and require thought... https://youtu.be/D5CLNC1kPsQ

[kent olsen]

Your right Bobby but the source usually does, hence the keeping at least 20 miles away.