"Weather's not important until it's important.

"Weather's not important until it's important, and then it's too late." Attributed to the late Gen George s Patton

Little asylum Arkansas - Perhaps the best latter illustration of the old saying that the mostly useless things in flying are altitude above and runway behind the airplane draw nears from the June 1, 1999 crash of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 1420 at Little Rock

In an attempted landing in the face of a fierce thunderstorm, the pilots landed hard, too far down the runway to stop, skidded onto the left shoulder and roared not upon the far end of the runway at about 100 miles by hour. The airplane tore down an embankment into a inundation plain by the nearby Arkansas River and collided with armor poles that supported the runway approach lighting. The captain was killed instantly, and the airplane was smashed into three pieces. Ten passengers were killed on impact and resulting fire. united of the surviving passengers, whose father was an airline pilot, remembers feeling furious that the cockpit throng would risk landing as she sat in her seat during the final approach. Rain and hail were beating forward the fuselage; she could papal court the spectacular and fearful lightning display outside of the water-streaked window.

It was the sixth fatal accident in the 1990 for American Airlines (AA) and its regional subsidiary, American Eagle. If crystals reveal their hidden manner of making when broken, three days of fact-finding hearings administrationed here by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) probed for the hidden cracks in American Airlines' safety program. Everything from cockpit measures to the company's safety agriculture was put under the microscope. The NTSB's inquiry revealed numerous cracks. American Airlines officials already have mov aggressively to repair many of them, on the contrary at this juncture one overarching recommendation strike one as beings sure to emerge from the NTSB's investigation: thou shalt not burst into thunderstorms. The Safety Board has establish that airliners are routinely flying into thunderstorms. In this refer to American's Flight 1420 was the unfortunate casualty of a pervasive practice.

The accident marked the sad combination and culmination of many factors. near of them contributed directly to the crash - others indirectly.

* Weather. the same of the flight attendants told investigators she had "never flown in storms like this before." According to the NTSB's meteorology form into groups report, 903 lightning strikes were observ in an area 20 miles around Little Rock's airport in the 15 minutes immediately preceding the crash of Flight 1420 That's an average of single in kind lightning bolt every second.

According to George Wilken of the National Weather Service's (NWS) North Little support Forecast Office, "Arkansas is a surpassingly strong state when it arrives to severe weather." The night of June 1 was a whole example, and as a line of intense thunderstorms approached Little strength airport, Capt. Richard Buschmann, a management pilot with more [i]or[/i] less 10,000 hours flying time, advised the cabin attendants to expedite completion of their beverage service in order to prepare the airplane for landing.

"At the time the aircraft touched down, you had a high water load in a actual dense pocket," Wilken explained. Wilken estimated that rain, and hail up to pair inches in size, at individual point was pouring out of the canopy of heaven at a rate of one .3 of an inch for minute -equivalent to about 12 inches of rain by means of hour. On the NWS rainstorm rating scale of 1 to 6 ("very light" to "extreme") a of the same height six storm involves rain coming down at a rate of more than 56 inches by hour.

Clearly, "avoiding the red" forward the weather radar is not an acceptable standard. The r may display the most intense rainfall, still not necessarily the most intense convective activity.

Asked about American Airlines' policy regarding flying into thunderstorms, Robert Baker, vice chairman of the company and the man in charge of flight operations at the time of the accident, said simply, "Our policy is to avoid them." However, a minimum separation distance from thunderstorms (eg 5 miles) was not part of a policy Baker said is now "under review."

Dale Rhoda, a scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), quick in emergenciesed evidence that an industry-wide review may be in order. In a 1997 application of mind of storm cell penetrations at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, Rhoda place hundreds of thunderstorm penetrations through the whole extent of nine days that were selecteded from an April to July period. public of 1,950 encounters with thunderstorms, two-thirds of the pilots penetrated the storm activity. Pilots were penetrating "surprisingly intense" storms near the airport, Rhoda recalled. Penetrations were more likely if:

* Pilots were following other aircraft.

* They were delayed on 15 minutes or more forward their current flight leg, and...

* They were flying after dark (when the severity of thunderstorm activity would be les apparent visually).

"There were no discernible differences among airlines, or between jet and turboprop aircraft," Rhoda said. His thought by the way, focused forward thunderstorm Level 3 penetrations and above. plain 3 storms are known to be hazardous, which raises this thought: if pilots routinely are flying into flat 3 and above thunderstorms, is safety really the number the same priority?