What’s it really like to pilot a plane in dense fog?
A recent video showed pilots taking off in near-zero visibility conditions. One aviation expert explained how that's possible and what zero-zero conditions are along with how pilots fly under those circumstances.
By
Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Nov 11, 2021 4:17 PM EDT
|
Updated Nov 11, 2021 4:23 PM EDT
Flying blind has become a term many people use synonymously with guesswork, ballparking and relying on intuition rather than instruction. But for pilots in Khimki, Russia, flying blind suddenly became a very real and literal situation earlier this month.
Days of heavy fog left the tarmac at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Khimki completely shrouded in mist, forcing pilots to take off and land in near-zero visibility for nearly 14 consecutive hours on Nov. 2. The fog, which also enveloped the nearby Russian capital of Moscow for several days after that, caused hundreds of flights to be canceled.
Khimki is located on the outskirts of Moscow in western Russia, about 250 miles northeast of Belarus.
Footage filmed from inside one plane's cockpit captured the point of view of one pilot as the plane descended onto the foggy landing strip that week. Beyond the windshield, runway identifier lights on the tarmac are barely discernable beyond a few feet ahead of the plane nose.
In another portion of the footage, a pilot successfully landed a plane amid extremely foggy conditions, with the pilot unable to see more than a few feet beyond the aircraft.
Aviation expert Dr. Michael Canders, director of the Aviation Center at Farmingdale State College on Long Island, New York, told AccuWeather that taking off and landing planes on a foggy tarmac is one of the trickiest parts of a pilot's job.
Canders said that while the rules and regulations regarding safe flying conditions may differ in other countries or at different airports, visibility is non-negotiable.
"Takeoffs and landings are typically best done with some visual reference," he said. "You’ve got to have some form of visibility to land an aircraft."
On top of the near-zero visibility, temperatures also dropped below freezing on Nov. 2, slicking some roads and runways with dangerous icy conditions, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty.
The threshold for deciding to cancel a flight may vary on the region or airport, but, Canders said, there are general rules of thumb that most follow. After watching the video, he said he didn't disagree with the airport's decision to allow flights -- and commended the pilots' abilities.
"The low visibility conditions increased the risk of the operation, but it appears that the pilots were able to successfully complete the takeoff and landing," Canders said in an email. "Zero-zero means no horizontal or vertical visibility at all, so I would describe this as near zero-zero."
AccuWeather Senior Software Developer Geoffrey Knauth has been flying airplanes for more than 40 years and was also impressed by the skills of the Russian pilots from the video.
"When I first looked at the video, I was like, 'Oh my God -- that’s low visibility,'" he said. "And it is, but then I thought 'OK, but in Moscow, or Heathrow, London, England, they have that pretty often. So they have to deal with it."
On top of pilots adapting their skills and comfort to their region's settings, Knauth and Canders both said that airports in particularly foggy areas of the world can adapt their requirements as well.
"It's very much dependent on the specifications of the operator, and then there are specified parameters to be met for, what we call, shooting the instrument approach or trying the instrument approach," Canders said. "You have to have ceiling and visibility minimums, and sometimes it’s just visibility minimums, but those are minimums in order for you to fly those approaches."
The visibility conditions in Moscow may have been near-zero, but, Canders added, some pilots are trained to take off and land in completely blind situations, known by aviators as "zero-zero." A zero-zero situation for a pilot is when there is zero visibility and zero ceiling.
Knauth said that when he was training, he learned how to take off in zero-zero conditions.
"Like, can’t see anything. Zero ceiling, nothing," he said. "It’s legal. But is it smart? No. But it’s legal for me to do that, and, in fact, when I got my instrument reading back in 1985, one of the things I had to do was practice a zero-zero takeoff."
In those situations, the plane's instrumentation becomes a pilot's best friend.
"The mantra is: trust the instruments," Canders said.
In Knauth's training, he recalled, instructors would put blinders on him so he could look at only the plane's instruments.
Canders, who trains aspiring pilots in New York, said teaching an aviator to be proficient at using the instruments is particularly crucial for situations in which a pilot could become spatially disoriented due to a lack of visual reference.
Planes queue up for takeoff at an airport in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Numbers of airplanes stocked at the tarmac at Nizhny Novgorod airport after Moscow refused their landing due to heavy fog. More than 30 flights were delayed or canceled at three airports in Moscow due to fog. (AP Photo)
Previously, Canders told AccuWeather that pilots should switch to instrument flight rules (IFR) when the cloud ceiling is less than 1,000 feet and visibility is reduced to fewer than 3 miles, "because you’re expecting to fly in instrument meteorological conditions, which basically means you don’t have reference to the outside. You’re flying by reference to instruments inside the aircraft."
Even in his years of experience as a rescue pilot, Canders said he has never had to navigate such a situation.
"There were situations where if it was life and death, you could give some consideration [to] a zero-zero takeoff," he said. "But you would want to make sure that if you had a problem you could come back to where you were departing from, and therefore you wanted some forward visibility, a quarter-mile or an eighth of a mile."
When visual references become hindered, whether in a near-zero or a zero-zero situation, Canders said the hundreds of hours with instrument training becomes critical.
"Your eyes, your ears, your audible sensors, your auditory sensors can fool you, can trick you if you don’t have your eyes to back up what you’re feeling or what you’re seeing," he said. "So trust those instruments."
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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News / Weather News
What’s it really like to pilot a plane in dense fog?
A recent video showed pilots taking off in near-zero visibility conditions. One aviation expert explained how that's possible and what zero-zero conditions are along with how pilots fly under those circumstances.
By Mark Puleo, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Nov 11, 2021 4:17 PM EDT | Updated Nov 11, 2021 4:23 PM EDT
Flying blind has become a term many people use synonymously with guesswork, ballparking and relying on intuition rather than instruction. But for pilots in Khimki, Russia, flying blind suddenly became a very real and literal situation earlier this month.
Days of heavy fog left the tarmac at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Khimki completely shrouded in mist, forcing pilots to take off and land in near-zero visibility for nearly 14 consecutive hours on Nov. 2. The fog, which also enveloped the nearby Russian capital of Moscow for several days after that, caused hundreds of flights to be canceled.
Khimki is located on the outskirts of Moscow in western Russia, about 250 miles northeast of Belarus.
Footage filmed from inside one plane's cockpit captured the point of view of one pilot as the plane descended onto the foggy landing strip that week. Beyond the windshield, runway identifier lights on the tarmac are barely discernable beyond a few feet ahead of the plane nose.
In another portion of the footage, a pilot successfully landed a plane amid extremely foggy conditions, with the pilot unable to see more than a few feet beyond the aircraft.
Aviation expert Dr. Michael Canders, director of the Aviation Center at Farmingdale State College on Long Island, New York, told AccuWeather that taking off and landing planes on a foggy tarmac is one of the trickiest parts of a pilot's job.
Canders said that while the rules and regulations regarding safe flying conditions may differ in other countries or at different airports, visibility is non-negotiable.
"Takeoffs and landings are typically best done with some visual reference," he said. "You’ve got to have some form of visibility to land an aircraft."
On top of the near-zero visibility, temperatures also dropped below freezing on Nov. 2, slicking some roads and runways with dangerous icy conditions, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty.
The threshold for deciding to cancel a flight may vary on the region or airport, but, Canders said, there are general rules of thumb that most follow. After watching the video, he said he didn't disagree with the airport's decision to allow flights -- and commended the pilots' abilities.
"The low visibility conditions increased the risk of the operation, but it appears that the pilots were able to successfully complete the takeoff and landing," Canders said in an email. "Zero-zero means no horizontal or vertical visibility at all, so I would describe this as near zero-zero."
AccuWeather Senior Software Developer Geoffrey Knauth has been flying airplanes for more than 40 years and was also impressed by the skills of the Russian pilots from the video.
"When I first looked at the video, I was like, 'Oh my God -- that’s low visibility,'" he said. "And it is, but then I thought 'OK, but in Moscow, or Heathrow, London, England, they have that pretty often. So they have to deal with it."
On top of pilots adapting their skills and comfort to their region's settings, Knauth and Canders both said that airports in particularly foggy areas of the world can adapt their requirements as well.
"It's very much dependent on the specifications of the operator, and then there are specified parameters to be met for, what we call, shooting the instrument approach or trying the instrument approach," Canders said. "You have to have ceiling and visibility minimums, and sometimes it’s just visibility minimums, but those are minimums in order for you to fly those approaches."
What is zero-zero?
The visibility conditions in Moscow may have been near-zero, but, Canders added, some pilots are trained to take off and land in completely blind situations, known by aviators as "zero-zero." A zero-zero situation for a pilot is when there is zero visibility and zero ceiling.
Knauth said that when he was training, he learned how to take off in zero-zero conditions.
"Like, can’t see anything. Zero ceiling, nothing," he said. "It’s legal. But is it smart? No. But it’s legal for me to do that, and, in fact, when I got my instrument reading back in 1985, one of the things I had to do was practice a zero-zero takeoff."
In those situations, the plane's instrumentation becomes a pilot's best friend.
"The mantra is: trust the instruments," Canders said.
In Knauth's training, he recalled, instructors would put blinders on him so he could look at only the plane's instruments.
Canders, who trains aspiring pilots in New York, said teaching an aviator to be proficient at using the instruments is particularly crucial for situations in which a pilot could become spatially disoriented due to a lack of visual reference.
Planes queue up for takeoff at an airport in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Numbers of airplanes stocked at the tarmac at Nizhny Novgorod airport after Moscow refused their landing due to heavy fog. More than 30 flights were delayed or canceled at three airports in Moscow due to fog. (AP Photo)
Previously, Canders told AccuWeather that pilots should switch to instrument flight rules (IFR) when the cloud ceiling is less than 1,000 feet and visibility is reduced to fewer than 3 miles, "because you’re expecting to fly in instrument meteorological conditions, which basically means you don’t have reference to the outside. You’re flying by reference to instruments inside the aircraft."
Even in his years of experience as a rescue pilot, Canders said he has never had to navigate such a situation.
"There were situations where if it was life and death, you could give some consideration [to] a zero-zero takeoff," he said. "But you would want to make sure that if you had a problem you could come back to where you were departing from, and therefore you wanted some forward visibility, a quarter-mile or an eighth of a mile."
When visual references become hindered, whether in a near-zero or a zero-zero situation, Canders said the hundreds of hours with instrument training becomes critical.
"Your eyes, your ears, your audible sensors, your auditory sensors can fool you, can trick you if you don’t have your eyes to back up what you’re feeling or what you’re seeing," he said. "So trust those instruments."
More to see:
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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