Too Hot to Fly
 

the article is actually surprisingly accurate

I was in Phoenix in June 1990 and remember it well.
On a Northwest 727 for MSP I think. Used every bit of the runway and climb was very gentle. I also recall feeling the heat through my shoes off the tarmac

Little anecdote on the side: The 727 ended up being a tri jet because United needed it for its hot & high Denver hub.

That day in 1990 everyone shut down when the temp went off the performance charts. SW paid Boeing that day for higher temperature performance data. All the other airlines figured it was a one time event. The next day the temp went off the charts again and all the other airlines had to shut down again. SW just kept flying.

It's not just "too hot". A year or two after EIS of the 747-8, we had a number of 747-8 aircraft grounded in Europe when a cold front moved in and dropped the pressure altitude below -1000 ft. - and Boeing hadn't published performance data lower than -1000 ft.
We quickly produced performance charts to -2000 ft. pressure altitude...

Step Turn (#5),

This snippet from my Page 153 #3056 on "Pilot's Brevet" (MilitaryAviation Forum) may amuse: (We are at RAF Willingdon Island, Cochin, S.India, summer 1945).

"I was disentangling myself from my harness and about to climb out, when the Duty Flight Corporal came dashing up indignantly in full Traffic Warden mode: "You can't leave that there 'ere !". I clearly remember shrugging my Mae West off one shoulder to show my rank cuff. It made little difference: "You can't leave that there 'ere, SIR !"

Why not ? For answer he pointed wordlessly at the Liberator, and I saw that the lower half of the main wheels had sunk through the tarmac. It was down to the axles already, and how they were ever going to get it out, Heaven only knows (like Fareastdriver's C5 at Honiara a few Posts ago).

It seemed that the local contractor who built the airfield had skimped on this patch, there was no foundation - nothing but sand under a thin skin of tarmac ! My Corporal was worried that the same might happen to me. I reassured him: it was very unlikely as I was only staying an hour or so, whereas the Lib had taken a night and a day to get into that state.

At lunch in the Mess, it was a major topic of conversation, and many were the solutions on offer. One of the better ones was: as the Far East war was over and it was a Lend-Lease aircraft, we should invite the Americans to come and take it away - if they could. Otherwise we'd put a low chain fence round it, leave it and declare it a War Memorial ! "

Hot temperatures, cancelled flights.
 

According to the news here La Vegas and other parts of Nevada and Arizona are about to suffer a spectacular heatwave, 120F, this week and airlines are cancelling flights.

I understand air density and density altitude but I am surprised that these temperatures are enough to cancel flights days in advance.

Can anyone quantify this in layman's terms? eg,, say, percent performance loss above a certain temperature or something?

The problem isn't performance per se, it's having the data to quantify the performance. If your take-off performance data tops out at 50ºC / 122ºF (as ours does) then you can't go flying when the temps are hotter than that. If it tops out at 45ºC, then that's your limit.

Too hot to fly?
 

American Airlines had to cancel a bunch of flights at Phoenix sirport because of the extreme heat there. According to the report, the Bombardier CRJ aircraft they were using has a maximum operating temperature of 118 degrees. Tuesday's forecast for Phoenix included a high of 120 degrees.

Why wasn't AA operations able to anticipate this?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...nes/410766001/

Who says they didn't? Seems vanishingly unlikely somehow.
But anticipating it would have changed what, exactly? The weather? The certification?
Is this trolling?

ChrisVJ - Aerocat is spot on. Our data also stops at 50 degrees. As for numbers, at our main base we can normally lift a full load from any runway from any intersection. On one particular runway we have 3,800 metres of tarmac. At 50 degrees Celsius we can only 43,700 kgs. At 46 degrees we can lift 45,000. This means that each degree at this temperature is 325 kgs or 3.5 passengers with bags or just over 10 minutes of fuel.

That was a well written article though. Clearly that reporter doesn't have a future, he'll have to reduce his accuracy and standards if he expects to get on!

Just because you don't have an answer to his/her question?
AA might have been able to chose a different aircraft to operate out of Phoenix that day.
One that has a higher max. operating temperature.

I guess that didn't want a repeat of DXB?

DXB? Your post is a bit vague - please may you expand?

Cant remember the ISA limitation on the A320 family aircraft, the largest fleet AA operates out of PHX, but I do remember when I lived there we were grounded more than once by certified OAT limitations (ISA+40) on the aircraft I was flying

Has Mr. WAT been at work again. Does it even still apply to modern beasts? There was the case, 20 years ago, at MXP, after much extensive resurfacing work to one runway where the truth was unearthed, literally. No doubt the cheapest tender had been accepted, or it was the cousin of the mayor, or it was the uncle of the airport manager, or......but he first take off of a heavy, on a very hot day, gouged chunks out off the new surface. Dodgy black stuff from the back of a lorry had been spread, it was suspected.

Sounds like they did. The USA Today story says AA told folks Saturday there were going to be problems.

And how's that going to work? The CRJs aren't flown by AA but by their regional affiliates. But putting that aside are you just going to pull a 150 -180 seat aircraft off its route and replace it with an 80 seat aircraft?

Might have been off the same back of a lorry lot that flew away after a Royal Air Maroc 737-200 opened the taps at TRN last year (or maybe the one before that)in hot weather. Happened right in front of my eyes. Whole strips of ashphalt blown away like paper.

During my airline career 1964-90 I recall both KLAS and KPHX being shut down for temperature limits a few times, but only for a few hours in the afternoon.

A bit of historical perspective.