Turbulent Royal flight

[Teddy engineer]

I was just reading about William and Kate's flight between Lahore and Islamabad, a distance of 160 miles, which should have lasted 25 minutes but actually took 2 hours and they returned to Lahore after two attempted landings in Islamabad, and suffered bad turbulence with lots of thunderstorm activity.
Curious what you pilots take is on this as I am questioning whether they should have attempted this flight in the first place given how bad the weather was.
Be gentle with me - I am just a simple engineer and frequent SLF!

[Easy Street]

Difficult to judge without a description of the weather conditions in more detail than “thunderstorms”. Thunderstorms can be extensive or small, slow or fast moving, isolated or frequent. If they were small, fast moving and isolated (‘showery’ type) then the crew would have banked on being able to hold off for a few minutes if needed to let a storm pass. If extensive and slow moving (‘frontal’ type) then it might not have been such a good idea. But another feature of thunderstorms is that they can develop and fizzle out rapidly, so provided you have a guaranteed good weather diversion it might still be judged worth an attempt. Things can change a lot even in the space of a 20 minute flight; it just seems not to have worked out on this occasion.

[Good Business Sense]

Originally Posted by Teddy engineer

I was just reading about William and Kate's flight between Lahore and Islamabad, a distance of 160 miles, which should have lasted 25 minutes but actually took 2 hours and they returned to Lahore after two attempted landings in Islamabad, and suffered bad turbulence with lots of thunderstorm activity.
Curious what you pilots take is on this as I am questioning whether they should have attempted this flight in the first place given how bad the weather was.
Be gentle with me - I am just a simple engineer and frequent SLF!

Hi Teddy, that means there is half the world you would never go to because thunderstorms are forecast - some slide past the airfield, some hit, some miss by 20-30 miles - who knows, certainly not the met people - TS do their own thing. You win some you lose some. What the royals experienced is par for the course in that part of the world at this time of year - all good fun.

Best

[Dan Dare]

Shame, I was hoping for a thread related to this.

G-APNZ D.31 Druine Turbulent Photographs. Flown by HRH Prince Philip. Won Kings Cup Air Race UK 1960

[ShyTorque]

Originally Posted by Good Business Sense

Hi Teddy, that means there is half the world you would never go to because thunderstorms are forecast - some slide past the airfield, some hit, some miss by 20-30 miles - who knows, certainly not the met people - TS do their own thing. You win some you lose some. What the royals experienced is par for the course in that part of the world at this time of year - all good fun.

Best

'zactly! Sometimes they get in the way, sometimes not so. In some parts of the world they are likely to occur daily.

[wiggy]

Originally Posted by Teddy engineer

Curious what you pilots take is on this as I am questioning whether they should have attempted this flight in the first place given how bad the weather was.

The royals aren't the first passengers to end up back where they started because of thunderstorms at/around destination, and they won't be the last....it's not a massively exceptional event and it's only news because of those involved

If airlines avoided flying through areas where Thunderstorms were forecast, and /or avoided departing for destinations where thunderstorms were forecast, then fro example India would be closed through out the Monsoon season, parts of the Caribbean would be shut down for months.

The important thing is having a plan avoiding the weather (radar/Mk 1 eyeball) that is actually there, carrying enough fuel to cater for weather avoidance and extended holding and most importantly being prepared to divert or return to point of origin if that is an option if that is an option it is a short sector.

[Phantom4]

Absolutely Wiggy. I have operated only a few times into Islamabad and there are other considerations apart from weather namely terrain and the approaches are challenging.Two attempts is quite enough IMHO.
A few years back it didn’t end well for a local crew.

[Imagegear]

Going into Bombay you know you are going to be in for a rough ride when the landing lights come on so the drivers can see the build-ups ahead.

Also, 90% of the time between Southern Africa and Europe one gets a few turns in the washing machine usually over Chad, or the Congo. Not pleasant.

IG

[3Greens]

Eh? Landing lights to see the cells? Never heard that Of that

[Council Van]

Originally Posted by 3Greens

Eh? Landing lights to see the cells? Never heard that Of that

I am not saying the landing lights will help but some times it pays to look out the window.

I was with one line trainer (new airline for me but not type) going into Manchester on a reasonably pleasant afternoon with only a few small build ups who asked if I was going to fly through the yellow area being painted on the weather radar. I think he was rather taken back when I suggested he actually had a look at the real world in which only a few little wispy bits of cloud were on view anywhere near our flight path.

[Phantom Driver]

Originally Posted by Council Van

I am not saying the landing lights will help but some times it pays to look out the window.

I was with one line trainer (new airline for me but not type) going into Manchester on a reasonably pleasant afternoon with only a few small build ups who asked if I was going to fly through the yellow area being painted on the weather radar. I think he was rather taken back when I suggested he actually had a look at the real world in which only a few little wispy bits of cloud were on view anywhere near our flight path.

Yes indeed . Old saying--" one peep is worth a thousand sweeps " ( admittedly with reference to the nav taking a sneak look outside to pick up the target during AI training ). However in the airline world , never ceased to amaze me how often guys would be heads down , deviating around weather using the radar when a look out of the window would show nice blue sky between those nasty build ups .( I usually waited a while before drawing their attention to the view .)

Another anomaly is modern digital radars which can paint a somewhat worse picture than actual , depending on whether you were using auto or manual gain settings . Yes , better safe than sorry , but the result ( if incorrectly set up ) could be unnecessary deviations . I recall cruising along once on a nice starlit night above the South China Sea . Traffic below was requesting deviations " due weather " . Nothing showing on our screens , apart from the usual fishing fleets .

And oh , by the way , flashing the landing lights at night was often a useful tool; for assessing the situation when flying through / near certain types of cloud . Joe radar doesn't always pick up everything .