Taking on a typhoon/hurricane

[lospilotos]

Being relatively new to the type of weather long-haul flying out of the middle-east could get you in, what are your tactics when heading into a typhoon/hurricane area?

I get it you don´t shoot the approach when it´s sitting right on top of the airfield, but what about en-route? Do you treat it as any other storm system, tactically avoiding by use of the weather radar, or do you avoid the whole thing like the plague? Right now watching Flightradar24, looking at a CX 330 at 33.000 ft which looks to be doing a head on straight towards where typhoon "Rammaun" is heading as well.

We are no strangers to winds at cruise around 100-150 kts in the jet streams, but I´d imagine it´s a whole other thing when they are circling around a massive low and CBs all around.

Any thoughts/experiences you´d like to share on the subject?

/L.

[aussiefarmer]

You will be surprised... funny enough many times you are able to overfly Typhoons en-route since the tops are relatively low FL300 or thereabouts.

At lower altitudes the weather radar will show lots of rain, but it is rarely concentrated like in strong storm cells. So you might see everything red or yellow but it is definitely not as turbulent as the same colours associated with CBs (wet season) kind of weather. There's just lots and lots of water.

The big issue, in my opinion, are the winds generated on the ground and close to the ground. This winds in many occasions will exceed or be very close to your airplane environmental limits for crosswinds and even door operations.

Nobody taught me that. Just speak from experience after flying in one of those areas of the world for a few years.

[Straighten Up]

When I saw the title I thought you were deciding whether to buy a Mig or a Messerschmidt 😉

[lospilotos]

Interesting... Thanks for sharing. I was standing by for the usual "if you haven´t got 10000 hours widebody command doing eights around typhoons you have no business hanging around here"...

@Straighten up: That was really funny :ok:

Anyone else care to share? (sharing is caring you know)

[Capn Rex Havoc]

Overflying cyclones / typhoons at 40k may be ok - ----- until you lose that donk :sad:

[J.L.Seagull]

Los,

It's exactly what you said. (use the weather radar... Properly!)

Aussiefarmer is spot on! Put the WXR in manual tilt mode and try to really understand what's around you. I've seen ppl deviate over 150 miles off track, trying to avoid what seem like really active storms, but they failed to realise that they had over 7-8000 ft between them vertically. (I'm waiting for incoming too.. "what if to have a Decompression, or what if you need to descend because of an engine failure? He he)

As for the monsoons in India, below 15000ft, most of the Red you see is just heavy rain with just a little turbulence.

It's different in Europe, where there's almost always hail.

The middle East can get really nasty too, with extremely strong convective windshear. Thankfully the storms never last more than an hour.

[Sidestick_n_Rudder]

Never had the pleasure of overflying a tropical cyclone, but remember hearing/reading that one thing to watch is a marked SAT rise at high levels (due to massive amounts of latent heat released by the typhoon due to condensation) and it subsequent impact on performance - max/OPT FL etc...

[ItsMeFromEarth]

Very good material available with NASA.ORG

[killer.a]

Thanks for posting this topic, I am also new to flying with Tropical Cyclones, except in the South East.

I've searched on google, but cannot find any informative Aviation Weather information or publications about TCs for pilots.

Thanks so far ppl who shared their knowledge and experience.

I believe, the correct link is nasa.gov

[QCM]

Press 2..........

[CaptainProp]

This document from airbus is a good start:

Adverse Weather Operations and usage of weather radar (http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/media_gallery/files/safety_library_items/AirbusSafetyLib_-FLT_OPS-ADV_WX-SEQ07.pdf)

CP

[Bring Back The Biff]

Overflew one to the South of Muscat a few weeks back - agree with other posters; use your weather radar correctly and make tactical diversions.

We ended up making one 40nm diversion off track and that was it...

Of course depends on the size of the system, but ours was in a very concentrated area and hence easy to avoid.

Much more challenging are long lines of heavy CB's associated with a 'line trough'which need to be crossed at some point, as going around simply isn't an option.

The most important tool in your bag is a thorough understanding of the weather radar in your aircraft type and particularly it's use in manual mode...