Giant Hailstones Can Spoil Your Flight

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has the story and picture of an Airbus 312 jet which flew through a giant-hail storm and was left with serious damage."

Silly joke

[Spudley]

What's worse than raining cats and dogs?

Hailing taxi-cabs.

(yeah, I know... only just on topic... but I couldn't resist ;-)

A lesson about journalists

[PD]

There is no such thing as an Airbus 312. The airplane that flew through the hailstorm was an Airbus 321, a rather common plane in service around the world.

The lesson is really a question: if a journalist, who is supposed to be an expert in reporting the facts, can't even get the type of aircraft right, then what else are they reporting incorrectly? Something to think about while watching CNN tonight.

Wrong.

[Kedyn's Crow]

A simple Google search shows the existance of an Airbus A340-312, which is likley what this lazy reporter was reffering to. I agree with you about journalists though. It's a good day for them when they get 3 out of four 4 straight.

Wrong? Right back atcha!

[Dahan]

A simple Google search shows the existance of an Airbus A340-312

Another simple Google search [google.com] shows that every [thescotsman.co.uk] other [news.com.au] article [cnn.com] says the plane was an Airbus [dailyrecord.co.uk] A321 [eveningtimes.co.uk].

Re:Wrong? Right back atcha!

[mduell]

The A321 and A340-312 are two very different jets. I, however, don't know them well enough to tell them apart from that photo. A321, Seating 166-220 [airbus.com] and the A340-300 family, of which I believe the A340-312 is a model. [airbus.com]

A321

[TamMan2000]

you can tell by the size of the plane relative to the people that it is a narrow body (single isle), which in this case (between A340 and A321) would mean the A321...

Re:Wrong.

[PD]

That's even worse. The equivalent mistake would be to refer to that Taurus out in your driveway as a Ford 3450 pounds. Sure, it's a Ford, and it's 3450 pounds (or whatever a Taurus weighs) but to call it that is useless.

Re:Wrong.

[HybridTheory]

There's a Taurus in my driveway?? Cool.

Re:A lesson about journalists

[PD]

The fact that you disagree with me tells me that I am exactly right.

Re:A lesson about journalists

[sgtwilko]

Certainly the BBC page linked to makes no mention of the type of 'plane so I would respectfully suggest that it was a typo of the submitter.

Re:A lesson about journalists

[PD]

The BBC story has been changed so that it doesn't mention the type of aircraft. It's different than yesterday.

This is surprising?

[tpearson]

Are we supposed to be amazed that huge hail can damage a plane?

Re:This is surprising?

[Bob Zer Fish]

Not really. Does anyone remember those massive hail stones that hit in Sydney a few years back? Were the largest hail stones recorded then? In some of the areas I went it looked like corrugated iron had been damaged on roofs.

Hey, who's flying this thing?

[pphrdza]

I can't help wondering why the pilots just flew into the storm. Either it didn't look that bad, or they had the plane on autopilot and weren't watching the storm scope.

Re:Hey, who's flying this thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they were watching the stormscope [avionix.com] and not the radar [avionix.com], since a stormscope is a spherics device and only detects electrical discharges associated with lightning and is thus totally blind to rain, hail, or other forms of precipitation. If you are into this sort of this, this month's copy of AOPA Pilot has a column that discusses a similar incident involving an AirTran DC9. That aircraft lost the radome (it departed the aircaft, as opposed to being severely dented as happened to the Airbus).

Or maybe the flight attendant from west Texas didn't like the pilot and told him to "Go to hail" :-).

Re:Hey, who's flying this thing?

[Detritus]

They were lucky. I remember an accident in the southern United States where a DC-9 tried to fly through a severe thunderstorm with hail. Both engines were destroyed and the plane crashed, killing everyone on board.

Involuntary screams?

[phorm]

There were a lot of people who let out involuntary screams and some very distressed young children crying near us

This is as opposed to a voluntary scream? Seriously, what do the speaker expect people to do?
"Oh shit, it does appear to me that giant hailstones are pummeling our plane somewhat fiercly. Attendant, please fetch me a cup of tea, and this time please strengthen it with a little rye. Well, get along then. That's a good girl"

Personally the only thing that I might be considering more than screaming would be to find the nearest source of a life raft/parachute in case of future need.

Radom damage

[Murphy(c)]

Just a quick note, that the damage seen on the picture from the BBC-News page, depicts a fairly large hole, our "inset" into the radom (nose cone) of the aircraft.

Now you have to remember that this part of the aircraft is probably the most fragile as it is not made out of steel or aluminium but rather carbon-epoxy (because it houses the plane's radar, and radar energy doesn't pass thru metal all that good).
Also the radom is not pressurised and a plane can easily fly without it nor, the radar it portects.

That being said, I cannot comment on the other impacts or their severity.

P.S. But as another poster said above, Why the hell did they fly into a thunder/hail storm in the first place is beyound me. "Cumulo Nimbus" (the big anvil shaped thunder storm clouds) are the first thing any pilote learns never to go near.

Murphy(c)

Re:Radom damage

[Alioth]

Avoiding CBs is all very well - if you're flying under VFR (visual flight rules) you can just look out for the clouds, and steer around them.

Embedded CBs are another kettle of fish. If you're already in another, otherwise benign cloud, you may not see the CB you're about to wander through. Airliners have weather radar to mitigate the risk of flying through a cell, but it does happen (limitations of the instrument, equipment failure, pilot error - radar pointed at the wrong thing etc). If you look through the NTSB reports, you'll find one or two airliners or corporate aircraft that encounter hail every year. Light GA planes encounter it (usually an embedded thunderstorm) a bit more often as they generally don't have expensive radar installations - although most GA pilots simply don't fly IFR when there are thunderstorms around.

Carbon absorbs radar energy too?

[nietsch]

It could be my understanding, but isn't carbonfibre quite conductive as well? It nothing more than long strands of graphite essentially. Therefore carbon fibre would not be the material radomes are made of.
On the picture it looks more like ordinary glassfibre, at least no black carbon fibres are visible...

And yeah: Why they did flew straigt through it is beyond me.

pock marks for speed

[bobba22]

I have always wondered whether aero or car designers would mimic the effects of the golf ball pock marks to get some extra efficiency. It seems that having random dips in the skin of the ball gives the drive substantial extra yards. If that were the case, would it not make sense for cars and planes to have them too? What about boats? Would it prove too costly to have this done to the skin (though I can't think why (unless it was truly random;)). In the case of the plane flying through the storm, I would hav

Re:pock marks for speed

[at_kernel_99]

I have always wondered whether aero or car designers would mimic the effects of the golf ball pock marks to get some extra efficiency. It seems that having random dips in the skin of the ball gives the drive substantial extra yards. If that were the case, would it not make sense for cars and planes to have them too? What about boats? Would it prove too costly to have this done to the skin (though I can't think why (unless it was truly random;)). In the case of the plane flying through the storm, I would ha

Re:pock marks for speed

[AB3A]

I have always wondered whether aero or car designers would mimic the effects of the golf ball pock marks to get some extra efficiency.

Many aircraft designs do. But instead of dimples, they look like short bits of sheet metal sticking up from the wing. They're called Vortex Generators, abbreviated VG.

VGs are designed to reduce the turbulence associated with the boundary layer. They can improve take-off performance, engine out flight performance on multi-engine aircraft, and they can improve control e

Re:pock marks for speed

[AlecC]

Yes, aircraft designer have looked into surface effects like that, and have considered surface treating certain parts of the skin to improve flow. But the size of the "pock marks" is much smaller than golf-ball sized. IIRC, you talking about pinhead sized dimples, applied as a thin film.