What's the effect of snow on flights?

Snowfall will cause flight delays and, in severe cases, grounding. In snowy weather, the visibility of the airport is seriously reduced, which affects the pilot's sight. When the visibility is only tens of meters, the aircraft controlled by the flight crew can't take off and land at all, or even taxi. If it is not handled properly, it will easily lead to flight accidents. At this time, the airport will have to be closed, and normal flights will become abnormal or cancelled.

Due to the arrival of strong cold air, the surface temperature dropped sharply. When snow meets low temperature, it will quickly freeze on the runway. The friction between aircraft tires and ice is reduced, and the aircraft will slide irregularly on the runway when landing or taking off, making it difficult to keep the direction and easily rushing out of the runway, causing danger.

The heavy snow makes the aircraft fuselage accumulate ice or freeze, and the accumulation of frost increases the weight of the aircraft. At the same time, ice accumulation may cause wing streamline changes, the weight of propeller blades is unbalanced, or the intake pipe in carburetor is blocked, the landing gear is difficult to retract, the throttle is frozen to cut off the fuel source, and the cockpit window is frozen to close the driver's line of sight. All these may lead to a serious plane crash.

In snowy weather, due to low visibility, in order to ensure safety, the air traffic control department will increase the safe distance between planes, which will inevitably make the flight waiting time longer and cause flight delays. At the same time, once the plane freezes, it must be de-iced in time. De-icing operation takes some time, which will inevitably affect the punctuality of flights.

Extended data:

Weather conditions affecting aircraft take-off:

1, thunderstorm weather

Thunderstorm is one of the main weather affecting flight in summer. Lightning and strong thunderstorm electric field will seriously interfere with medium and short wave radio communication, and even temporarily interrupt communication. When there is a thunderstorm over the airport, heavy precipitation, poor visibility, sudden change of wind direction and gust have great influence on flight activities and ground equipment.

2. Low cloud weather

Low cloud is one of the dangerous weather that endangers flight safety, and it will affect the landing of aircraft. When the airport is covered with low clouds, if the altitude of the plane from the ground is very low after the clouds leave and it is not aimed at the runway, it is often too late to correct it, which is easy to cause a go-around. Sometimes due to improper command or operation, it may also cause an accident in which the plane collides with an obstacle on the ground and stalls.

3. Snowy days

Ice is very dangerous for flying. The accumulation of frost increases the weight of the plane. More importantly, it can be imagined that the risk of plane crash is due to the change of wing streamline, the imbalance of propeller blade weight, or the closure of carburetor intake pipe, the difficulty in retracting landing gear, and the freezing of cockpit windows, which closes the driver's line of sight.

Phoenix Net-Special Topic: The Influence of Extreme Climate on Our Life

People's Daily Online-More than 300 flights at Beijing Capital Airport were delayed due to snowfall.