By Global Warming Alliance
Attention: AVIATION, ENVIRONMENT, ENGINEERING London, 05 March
2008
A
climate change organisation which researches wind and hurricane
intensification due to global warming has criticised authorities
for not doing enough to protect airline passengers and their crews.
They
warn that unless aircraft control systems are not redesigned to
handle the stronger winds now more common, accidents in the critical
final approach stage of landing will increase.
‘The
maximum crosswind limits have only increased on Boeing aircraft
by 7 knots since the beginning of the jet age,’ says Donald
Burfitt-Dons, Chairman of the Global Warming Alliance and a former
airline pilot. ‘The control systems are designed to cope
with a 30 to 35 knot crosswind on landing. That is no longer sufficient’.
He is urging an immediate review of safety standards to ensure
future aircraft can handle the meteorological conditions of today.
Ship engineers also need to look at rudder control limitations
in order for vessels particularly high sided ones, to maintain
directional control in the hurricane strength winds now being
encountered often in straits with limited room to manoeuvre.
‘Brussels
and Washington should be working together to set out new guidelines
for future aircraft and ship design to cope with the increasing
wind strengths now being seen around the world.’
He
quotes as an example the recent Lufthansa flight from Munich with
137 passengers on board, which scraped the runway when trying
to land in a crosswind of 35 gusting 55 knots at Hamburg Airport,
outside the present limits. ‘No one seems to be looking
at the underlying reason why these accidents are happening,’
said Donald Burfitt-Dons. ‘Ships and aircraft have been
designed for less demanding conditions than those we are now seeing
around the world.’
