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US Airways cancelling flights due to heat
[...]US Airways had to cancel 18 flights Saturday due to the heat, spokesman Todd Lehmacher said. He said planes are certified for takeoff up to 118 degrees, but the temperature crept up to 119 degrees in Phoenix. (www.cnn.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
I think David pretty much hit the nail on the head. It was off the chart temp. wise and my guess, probably Airbus. Long ago, when flying Falcon 20's for a freight operator, got a call to drop what you are doing and go fly a hot shot (pardon the pun) trip to and out of of PHX. Seems it was 120 degrees, and nobodys performance charts went that high. Falcons went to 125. Probably because of Fed-Ex. So when I climbed out of the airplane in PHX in shorts, T-shirt and sneakers, the line guy looked at me, laughed, and said "Man, you got a hell of a job". And "It's a dry heat" is bull. 120 is 120.
Just a little additional. Sky Harbor put out a piece I just found that said AWE had charts to 120. AWE aircraft are mostly Boeing and they said it only took an hour for Boeing to update them and get them to them. That said, as far as these cancelled flights go, they were probably either Airbus or else US had some low number flights and used the heat as an excuse to cancel them.
I spent a year down in Tucson and while humidty definitly has to figure in as a diffenence between there and here, hot is hot.LOL
One of the locals chimes in on the subject.....
http://phoenix.about.com/od/phoenixfactsandfiction/a/cancelflights.htm
http://phoenix.about.com/od/phoenixfactsandfiction/a/cancelflights.htm
I wonder if it is more of a point that the performance charts for the aircraft simply don't go that high. In the airline industry, you don't get to fudge things like performance numbers, everything is by the book. If the book didn't go that high, it would be just like having a limitation.
Years ago when I flew for the airlines all of the T/O performance charts and data ended at 110 degrees. If you did not have the info then the temperature became a no go limitation. Whether or not higher temp data could be gotten from the manufacturer in a timely manner is questionable.