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Old Dec 8, 2006, 6:38 am
  #15  
JDiver
Moderator: American AAdvantage
 
Join Date: May 2000
Location: NorCal - SMF area
Programs: AA LT Plat; HH LT Diamond, Maître-plongeur des Muccis
Posts: 62,948
Well, scubamom, we learn more about you every day. But you learned to fly in a great environment - avoiding crosswinds makes it a but tougher when we encounter them. In northern California, Travis AFB was also a carrier-training field due to the prevalence of winds out of the west.

Even private pilots are required to have certain experiences, and if we really want to learn, we practice landings and takeoffs on such varied environmental conditions and fields as we can - e.g. wet and dry grass.

Commercial pilots must (as you know) be rated as to type as well - because aircraft all have their own peculiarities. The Beech KingAir that has comprised much of my recent flying (a client's, so no miles; the horror! ) for example, has a wing that looks like a P-51's, which makes for a hot twin in terms of performance but in icing conditions can load up with ice if the pilot cranks in too high an angle of attack. KingAir pilots learn about that, so they can avoid the situation that might lead to ice-ups, such as the conditions we experience in the Sacramento Valley on a number of winter days (makes it a much nicer day .)

AA pilots learn about the peculiarities of the a/c they are type-rated in as well - a high-tailplane (horizontal stabilizer or even stabilator) aircraft will behave differently than a low-tail, a 737 with engines set midship and farther out from the fuselage center will have far different flight characteristics than an MD-80 with aft-mounted engines mounted on the fuselage itself. These are variables that go into calculating max wind conditions for a specific aircraft in takeoffs and landings as well as those mentioned previously.

So, flying AA we learn about this by the seat of our pants, so to speak, when we are dealing with strong winds (lake effect at ORD or Great Lakes airports, BOS, SFO... and sometimes on approach / departure at DEN.) But commercial aircraft are built to take stronger wind forces than most passengers can easily tolerate, a satisfying thing to know.
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