SpiceJet flight flew into squall while 3 others deviated left & right
MUMBAI: Even as the SpiceJet flight from Mumbai to Durgapur flew into serious turbulence on Sunday, injuring 17 onboard, a minimum of 3 other flights that were routed to fly over the same region had actually deviated and selected longer routings to prevent the violent squall line of’Kalbaisakhi’ thunderstorm cells, reports Manju V. The SpiceJet mishap was the third such pre-monsoon turbulence associated with Kalbaisakhi in the previous few years that resulted in major injuries to leaflets. Others that deviated consisted of IndiGo flights from Ahmedabad and Chandigarh– both bound for Kolkata– and a SpiceJet flight from Delhi to
Hanoi, Vietnam. Satellite images reveal a line of thunderstorm cells tracing a C-shaped pattern from Gaya down to Ranchi and Jamshedpur. A pre-monsoon weather condition phenomenon, Kalbaisakhi brings downpour or serious thunderstorm with dark clouds and gale-speed winds. Following Sunday’s incident where a SpiceJet Mumbai-Durgapur flight faced turbulence, the airlines issued a declaration saying, “The weather condition radar on this airplane did not have problems. The aircraft had actually operated four sectors prior to this sector on May 1. This weather radar has a manual tilt setting to allow the pilot to set the tilt function according to the flight profile. Pilots utilize manual tilt to inspect the weather condition above and below their flight course. This function is common to all weather radars, consisting of the most recent models. Pilots are welltrained to use this function and do so routinely and efficiently every day to prevent locations of bad weather (turbulence). They have actually been doing so for years
. “However, a Honeywell file on next-generation weather radar mentions that manually-operated radar require pilots to go through comprehensive training and gain experience to be reliable.”These ’til t-based radar systems’are labour-intensive, requiring the pilot to make complex geometric estimations … When the workload is heavy, it is possible to change the radar incorrectly or misinterpret the information.” Capt Amit Singh, an air safety expert, said,” No pilot would purposefully go into a thunderstorm cell, specifically one associated with Kalbaisakh. “Asource stated, “A variety of flights deviated to the left and right of this squall line. The SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Hanoi goes over Kolkata and that airplane, too, deviated. Apparently, the pilots of that flight had actually notified pilots of the Durgapur SpiceJet flight that every other flight was deviating.”Pilots think that the manually run older generation weather condition radar on the SpiceJet Boeing 737-800 aircraft, VT-SLH, played an important role in sending the aircraft into turbulence.”About 9 aircraft in the SpiceJet Boeing 737 fleet, including the one associated with the accident, are fitted with the old handbook operating Honeywell weather radar,”stated a source. Published at Sat, 07 May 2022 00:54:21 +0000