CORRECTION : As several commenters have pointed out ( 1 , 2 ), the cause of the Colgan Flight crash

Follow The Vane Followed Related blogs Gawker Newsfeed Valleywag Defamer Morning After TKTK Justice Internet paris discount hotels Gawker Review of Books True Stories Domesticity Fortress America Antiviral Dog Sausage Blogs you may like Deadspin Gawker Gizmodo io9 Jalopnik Jezebel Kotaku Lifehacker Sploid Username Notifications Follow The Vane Followed Related blogs Gawker Newsfeed Valleywag Defamer Morning After TKTK Justice Internet Gawker Review of Books True Stories Domesticity Fortress America Antiviral Dog Sausage Blogs you may like Deadspin Gawker Gizmodo io9 Jalopnik Jezebel Kotaku Lifehacker Sploid paris discount hotels Trending on Kinja 1. L.A. Police Chase Results paris discount hotels In Live, Televised paris discount hotels Gunfight on The Concourse 2. The Disturbing Puzzle Game That Nobody Can Solve on Kotaku 3. This Supercut Of South Carolina s Stupidest, Angriest Drivers Is Amazing on Jalopnik Written by Dennis Mersereau South Pacific paris discount hotels s Vanuatu Hammered by 165 MPH Tropical Cyclone Southern Rains Will Lead to Weekend Snow in New England, I m So Sorry A Potentially Catastrophic Cyclone Will Threaten Vanuatu on Friday Follow Followed In 5 seconds, click here to continue reading... The Crash of Delta 1086 Is Exactly Why Airlines Cancel paris discount hotels Flights for Snow 57 Dennis Mersereau Profile Follow Unfollow Dennis Mersereau Filed to: delta 1086 plane crash airplanes flying laguardia new york city winter heavy snow 3/05/15 4:43pm 3/05/15 4:43pm Edit Delete Invite Invite manually Promote X Dismiss X Undismiss Block for The Vane Hide Share to Kinja Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest Share to Twitter paris discount hotels Go to permalink
We've all moaned and groaned over flights cancelled due to weather. It's maddening to miss your connection (or even your whole trip) because of bad weather, but incidents like today's crash of Delta 1086 in a snowy New York City are exactly why they make that tough call that can affect millions of travelers.
If for some reason you haven't heard yet, 24 people received minor injuries when a Delta Air Lines MD-88 from Atlanta to New York-LaGuardia skidded off of Runway paris discount hotels 13 on landing late this morning . The plane veered left off the runway and onto the grass, paris discount hotels crashing into an embankment paris discount hotels on the airport's boundary with Flushing Bay. All passengers and crew managed to evacuate the damaged aircraft, which lost its left wing (causing a fuel spill) and took a nasty hit to the nose when it impacted the embankment.
New York is one of many cities in the eastern United States on the receiving end of a sprawling, slow-moving winter paris discount hotels storm that dropped up to two feet of snow on parts of Kentucky last night. As such, c onditions weren't all that great at LaGuardia when the plane landed a little after 11:00 AM, or 16:00 UTC.
Almost all official weather stations around the world produce weather data in a condensed format called a METAR, short for MET eorological A viation paris discount hotels (or Aerodome ) R eport. Here's LaGuardia Airport's METAR taken shortly after Delta 1086 crashed:
The report was taken at 11:22 AM with temperatures around 27 F and winds blowing from 10 (the north) at around 10 MPH. Conditions paris discount hotels at the time were overcast at 1,100 feet with moderate snow falling and freezing fog present over the field. The station reported visibility of one-quarter of a mile, but an observer added a remark at the end of the report saying that the surface visibility was one-half of a mile.
The aircraft had a slight tailwind on landing. paris discount hotels Planes landing on Runway 13 are facing roughly 135 , or southeast, and winds were blowing from 10 , or north, so winds were blowing towards the back-left part of the plane as it landed. Planes almost always take off and land into the wind because tailwinds inflate their speed—if that tailwind shifts or stops blowing, you suddenly lose some of your forward speed, and during landing, a sudden loss of any forward speed can be disastrous. (Correction: As many emails paris discount hotels and comments have gleefully pointed out, I was wrong about tailwinds. Tailwinds aren't necessarily dangerous, they just require a longer stretch of runway to take off or land. I was thinking of the danger of tailwinds with regard to microbursts . Planes take off and land with a headwind because it increases air speed and shortens the runway length required.) Temperatures paris discount hotels were cold enough that the snow and freezing fog were readily sticking to exposed surfaces at the time.
Of course, we won't know for sure the exact cause of the crash until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) paris discount hotels releases their report a year from now, but planes paris discount hotels don't just skid off of runways for no reason. Given the conditions at the time, it's safe to speculate that hazardous weather conditions played at least a contributing role in the plane's paris discount hotels runway paris discount hotels excursion.
It's annoying as hell to get stuck in an airport because of a cancelled flight, but incidents like the one in New York this morning are exact reason that airlines ground thousands of planes during severe winter storms.
Aside from traffic management, one of the main reasons that airlines cancel flights during hazardous weather is the condition of runways at affected airports. It goes without saying that aircraft are heavy and they're going very fast when they come in for a landing. On a good day, aircraft need ample room to use their brakes, spoilers (the flaps that extend on the top of the wing), and reverse thrust paris discount hotels to slow the aircraft to a safe speed so they can begin taxiing to the gate. When runways are slippery from rain, snow, or ice, they need a much longer stretch of pavement in order to maintain traction and safely slow down.
There are some airports in the world where space is virtually no issue. The runways at Denver International Airport are all more than two miles long. LaGuardia, paris discount hotels stuck on the northwest corner of Long Island with water to its north and millions of people to its south, doesn't have that luxury. Each of LaGuardia's runways stretch paris discount hotels about 7,000 feet, or a little over 1.3 miles long. When you combine the complicated approach pattern required to land at the airport along with the relatively short runway lengths, pilots aren't afforded much room for error.
Within the past two years, several commercial aircraft paris discount hotels have slid off of runways and taxiways at airports around the United States due to icy conditions. In January 2014, a Delta Connection jet from Toronto slid into the grass at New York-JFK after encountering an icy patch on a taxiway. Another Delta jet slid off the runway during a snowstorm in Madison, Wisconsin, back in December paris discount hotels 2013. A United flight slid into the grass after landing on an icy runway in Cleveland in February 2013. Back in 1994, a Continental Airlines jet slid off a runway and into a ditch during a snowstorm after aborting its takeoff from LaGuardia.
Another major concern paris discount hotels aviators run into during winter storms is icing on the aircraft itself. Even a small amount of ice on an airplane can spell disaster—some pilots paris discount hotels will request their planes to be deiced after a light morning frost let alone a significant bout of freezing rain or snow. Air must flow smoothly over an airfoil in order for the plane to take off and maintain controlled flight. Any significant buildup of ice on any the surface of an airplane—especially the wings—can disrupt the airflow and cause the plane to lose speed, paris discount hotels stall, and potentially crash.
CORRECTION : As several commenters have pointed out ( 1 , 2 ), the cause of the Colgan Flight crash discussed in the next paragraph was not due to ice, but rather pilot fatigue. Icing was discussed during the investigation, but found not a significant factor in the accident. I apologize for my error. A better example would have been Air Florida 90 , a flight that crashed in the Potomac River after taking off from National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, during a snowstorm. In that crash, the pilots failed to recognize and mitigate ice buildup on the aircraft and its engines, preventing the plane from gaining altitude before it crashed into the 14th Street Bridge. The original paragraph appears below, unedited.
No American air carriers have experienced a fatal accident since Colgan Flight 3407 crashed in a neighborhood near Buffalo, New York, on February 12, 2009. The turboprop paris discount hotels flew through severe icing on its approach into Buffalo from Newark, allowing a crust of ice to form on the aircraft's wings. The overworked and overtired pilots paris discount hotels didn't properly respond to the ice buildup paris discount hotels on the aircraft, causing the plane to go into an irreversible stall.
Low visibility is a pretty good reason to cancel flights. It helps when the pilot can see where he or she is flying your plane at several hundred miles per hour. The inability to see more than a few hundred feet in front of you is more common paris discount hotels during dense fog than winter paris discount hotels storms, but visibility can dip pretty low in heavy snow.
Commercial pilots are trained to fly their planes under two different sets of conditions: VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). paris discount hotels The former allows pilots to use their skills and visual judgement during takeoff and landing, while the latter requires pilots to strictly adhere to their instruments when visibility is too low to safely maintain control of the aircraft.
On December 16, 1997, an Air Canada regional paris discount hotels jet carrying 42 people crashed in Fredericton, New Brunswick, when pilots attempted to abort their landing due to dense fog . The pilots were unable to regain altitude, clipping the runway with one wing and crashing into the edge of a wooded area. Amazingly, nobody was killed, and zero deaths is even more incredible when you see the picture of the tree that tore through the cabin .
Winter weather isn't the only reason that flights are cancelled. Severe thunderstorms over the airfield present paris discount hotels a whole new set of weather-related issues, and they often result in planes circling or remaining grounded until the worst of the weather has passed through.
Almost everyone who has to fly on a regular basis runs into someone who inevitably yells at a gate agent because bad weath