Section 3—Environmental Threats

Convective Turbulence

By its nature convective activity is characterized by rapidly rising masses of air and the high volumes of
falling precipitation, coupled with increased air density due to cooling aloft, can create equally rapid
downwards air currents inside and around a convective cloud. Because of the low viscosity of air these
updrafts and downdrafts can exist in close lateral proximity, leading to sharp changes in vertical motion.
An aircraft encountering these ‘shears’ may sustain severe jolts, disturbances in attitude, sudden gains
or losses of altitude and potentially structural damage. In case that the experience was unforeseen or
even in the worst cases predicted, such results in situational understanding, pilot performance, and
decision making could be appalling and weakening. Few LOC-I crashes require structural disruption
before the impact, although it is seen that this is more likely to sustain during manual flight rebound
attitude/airspeed attempts than the turbulence itself.It is advised, in most situations, to keep the
autopilot enabled.

Micro-burst

The surface will gradually be reached by heavy downdrafts within or near to convective movement.
These quick-moving shafts, with cold, dense air and heavy precipitation often reach the bottom and
disperse out.In all directions horizontally to create powerful, thick winds overcoming the prevailing
stream. A rolling wave of very turbulent air will drive the outer eruption of wind. The weather,
turbulence and downdrafts associated with this will significantly deteriorate aviation efficiency and
disrupt flight attitude and flight direction.

Lightning

Aircraft was engineered to preserve lightnings using bonding and static discharge mechanisms for
minimally affected electric charges. However, extreme lightning strikes have often disabled or
interrupted the structures of vital aircraft, decreased overall capabilities and increased workload in
cockpits. A lightning strike will once again stun pilots by its abrupt and spectacular existence and the
brilliance of the flash can deteriorate night vision. Hazard occurring from thunderstorms can be difficult
to observe, but maintenance should be aware of imminent strikes so as to ensure proper inspections
and controls

Icing

Big convective clouds produce large amounts, in liquid form but below 0C, of super-cooled water
droplets. If the aircraft surfaces impact these droplets then they are primed to freeze and stick to the
airframe immediately. Aircraft icing will lead to loss of lift and increased weight and subsequent
degradation of airport operations until it is resolved by anti-icing systems. The intake of motor will
interrupt the gas path of the motor, reduce the thrust available and eventually flame-out. Furthermore,
ice, leading to system failures and lack of automation may impact probes and sensors that provide the
essential wind information to aircraft systems.
High Altitude Ice Crystals

It is only recently discovered that the small ice crystals in and around the upper reaches of large,
convective clouds are a danger to commercial aviation. The highest risk to the wind from large areas of
convective clouds has been identified by satellite research, particularly in tropics. The cause of such
engine 'rollback' incidents was high-altitude ice crystals, which had an unescapable effect on the flight
path of the aircraft and increased working load in the cockpit. Although these very cold crystals would
not cling to the fuselage or engine inlets like typical icing, they are believed to partly melt in the high
temperatures of the engine heart and then build up internal engine components. 1. The possibility still
exists that pitot samples would be obscured by high amounts of ice crystals that could overload the ice
control systems.

Precipitation

Advanced turbine engines are designed to retain massive quantities of water intake from the flight of
heavy rain, but updrafts can collect at some speeds in extremely strong convective clouds, leading to
very high levels of water droplets. This can be enough to destroy the engine Or even trigger a flame out.
Hail can cause severe damage in the leading corners, radoms, and exterior sensors, particularly in
combination with high aircraft penetration speeds and is typical in massive convective clouds with up to
several centimetres. Hail meetings produce considerable noise in the cockpit, that can disturb pilots.

Threats in Clear Air

1. Clear Air Turbulence (CAT)

CAT is the chaotic interaction of quick-moving air currents and the slower moving air around them,
which is usually correlated with high altitude jet streams. Due to the low air viscosity, especially at a high
level Altitude, a jet stream velocity gradient, can be very steep and the turbulence can be intense. CAT
can be seen in or around a jet stream but the most prominent effects are on the polar and lower
margins of the highest flow than inside the center of the jet stream. CAT can be predicted precisely but
cannot be sensed quickly in the airplane, so meetings can be abrupt and unexpected.

2. Mountain Waves

The heavy and continuous vertical air flow between the fluctuations of the waves helps pilots and
automated operators to measure aircraft performance margins and difficulties in sustaining the
requested flight path and airspeed. Air flow changes sharply in rotor systems below the surface
waves and to the lee of the mountains will alter the attitude of aircraft.

3. Wake Vortices

A small aircraft with turbulence from a much bigger aircraft may be seriously disturbed in its flight
path to the stage where control is lost. Larger aircraft could well experience some sharp and abrupt
disruptions, but could sustain safe flying. Automation cannot be done in the short term, however,
and the autopilot can well decommission during a meeting to allow the pilots to work manually in an
unpredictable and uncertain situation. IATA STEADES has found that about 1000 feet below and 10-
20 nautical miles below heavy aircraft forms are at highest risk of wake vortex experiences in
cruises, and that there are a variety of casualties. During arrivals, approaches and departures, Vortex
experiences are also recorded, particularly in busy airports where controllers may apply minimum
duration separation for capacity maintenance. Serious bank angle disruptions were recorded,
autopilots were disconnected, aircraft system warnings, TCAS alerts, triggered stick shaker, even a
few engine stalls. The frequency of the deviations and the duration of the storms are sufficiently
small in most wake vortex cases to allow the pilot control inputs to recover the original unwanted
aircraft conditions. Only if these are unjustified delayed inputs or wrong LOC-I problem that should
be created which ae then unrecoverable.

Human Performance Factors

The effects of any environmental hazard experience essentially rely on pilots' success in handling the
disruptions or device declines that occur. This can be as basic as controlling the automation, to
ensure the proper management of flight path and airspeed or the difficulty of returning from an
unusual cloud aircraft attitude promptly and accurately. Pilots seldom pursue major environmental
risks, such that experiences of this nature appear to be sudden and possibly very abrupt at first, with
growing evidence of a substantial loss of output some time after the incident and deterioration of
judgment due to the 'start' effect and poor decision making. It is well-known that strong emphasis
on automation has weakened manual flying skills in modern flight operations, but these can be
needed in timely manner and in tough situations to prevent a possible LOC-I situation. Physiological
conditions may also impact turbulence performance in long-lasting meetings, including vision
disruption, manual nimbleness and even fatigue.

Operators should continually strive to track and increase the quality of training systems in the
management and enhancement of the awareness of the pilot regarding the causes that lead to
injuries. There will still be hazards, but as much as pilots know about them and how the risk posed
can be properly identified, controlled and reduced, the more likely risky situations are to be
prevented and deviations to flights rescued until too late in the course of the mission.

Section 4—Environmental Factors: Mitigations

1. Forecasting

Weather predictions in general and related conditions, especially aviation, are greatly improved in
recent years, as satellite data offers a global perspective, and computers are able to feed massive
amounts of information into complicated weather models. This will help the operators, from a
logistical and perhaps climatic point of view, to determine when they arrive and depart in a
particular airfield in order to escape the weather conditions, to control tiredness by scheduling
suitable compositions of flight crew to meet longer or shorter seasonal flight hours or to deter any
arrival or departure paths.

But since the exact weather outlook is relatively short-term, strategic choice is its greatest
advantage. Despite the increased cost of fuel and flight time, dispatchers and pilots would be
advisable to select a path which, for example, runs around a rounding storm rather than a
roundabout one, which decreases the likelihood of an Environmental Hazard. It might be enticing to
benefit from a favorable jet stream but the better option to use another route would be to travel for
several hours in mild or extreme CAT.

Despite the well-known risks it can often be difficult to prevent a weather occurrence when it is as
detailed and prevalent as for example the moonsoon or the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence
Zone).   This helps pilots to take into account the possible risks to be faced and the necessary
methods for prevention in consideration the understanding and the relevance of forecasting.

Would anti-icing engines be sufficient for long periods; should it anticipate a major weather
deviation; can it bring more fuel to promote these defensive measures?

In the control of air system quality and reliability, forecasts and planned environmental conditions
must also be taken into consideration. For airborne weather radar (AWR), ice monitoring and
antifreeze systems, the minimum list of equipment (MEL) must take into account the weather en
route when approving or preventing shipping.

2. Detection

In clear skies and daylight, isolated convective clouds can clearly be visually detected and at night,
moonlight and lightning strikes can be supported. Wherever pilots fly in possible or forecast
operations, a cautious look ahead to the horizon and particularly careful to grow a convective cloud
forward, that may subsequently rise to cruising altitude, may reduce the possibility of inadvertent
infiltration. Convective activity, though, is mostly located in large regions of an invigoratingly active
cloud and can therefore not be seen.

The main assistance for detecting convective motion has been AWR for several years. This typically
involves a laterally scanned antenna, a processor and a touchscreen display inside the nose radome,
which are most often built into the horizontal circumstance or the navigation panel. The pilots have
controls in the cockpit that activate and disable the device, alter the seen spectrum, alter the tilt
angle of the antenna, and adjust the increase of the radar reflected signal. The operating theory
depends on how much radar energy is transferred by water droplets in the cloud back to the
antenna and it is thus essentially a method for detecting droplets instead of turbulence.

Higher convective turbulence is also associated with the borders of higher concentrations of big
droplets, where updrafts and downdrafts are met to ensure reliability but those thickly packed
droplets often consume a significant proportion of the radar signal energy and potentially mask
other heavy precipitation and turmoil.

Turbulence and often extreme turbulence may occur without droplets in large convective cells. In
specific AWR (Airborne Weather Radar) is very weak in the identification of ice crystals which are a
significant part of the water level in the top convective clouds. Flight in high ice crystals can be
distinguished by St Elmo's fire and an odd 'tinkling' sound that is distinct from the sounds of the
water droplets that hissing sound on the windscreen.

AWR pilots must constantly modify the tilt control to identify the greatest detection gain by looking
for lower water droplet returns, which might indicate ice and turbulence. Each pilot chooses a
current AWR systems such that the antenna scans the first sweep at one angle and a new angle at
the next. This provides a clearer understanding of the cloud structure without further modification
of the tilt. The Doppler theory is used by other modern devices to track the vertical displacement of
water droplets in clouds such as a more precise view of rainfalls and turbulence. Be alert not to
confuse field returns with poor weather or vice versa. The gain regulation can be used for filtering
noise and conflict on the show and for revealing the more signified weather rises so be careful not
to leave the advantage for long stretches amplified.
 In a range of tilt angles and sizes, the most modern 'multi-scan' weather radars automatically scan
and then save the scanned data to create a simulated view of the future. They are now screening
land retour by using internal algorithms to present pilots with currently the clearest and most
comprehensive forecast indicators.

Some aircraft have predictive windshear radar  PWR but like AWR, they simply sense rainfall rather
than windshear. PWR helps to alert pilots of possible turbulence and windshear in advance as they
reach and leave at lower altitudes. Pilots should brace themselves for possible electromagnetic
collisions with heavy downdrafts, turbulence and windshear that can compromise aviation efficiency
and interrupt the flight route by sensing and warning of the very large levels of rain drops.

In cold and super-cooled water droplets, the chance of aircraft freezing is the strongest in the lowest
and mid-level convective cloud and AWR therefore is useful for warning pilots of areas with prone
icing conditions. Pilots are however supposed to have taken precautions in order to deter large AWR
returns. Many planes are fitted with icing or imminent icing devices and pilots are alerted to
effective anti-icing systems.

In light winds – CAT, mountain wave and wake vortexes - AWR offers little assistance in the
identification of social factors. The first indicator of CAT presence may be a rapid and extreme
turbulence, although it is likely that high wind velocities at altitudes close to the tropopause are a
forerunner signal. Alternatively, the first signs may be odd high or low thrust settings sufficient to
sustain the chosen airspeed/Mach number in upward and downward phase of the waves. The
mountain wave can be seen on long lines of lenticular cloud wave running parallel to the downwind
mountains. Linear rotor clouds can also suggest turbulent rotors on the lee side of mountains. Wake
vortexes provide no possibility for detection, but they can be forecast in any measure when they
travel behind a commercial aircraft when they approach and depart. Condensation routes from
other aircraft at cruising altitudes can provide a certain indicator of wake vortices location and
probability.

Pilot flight notes or 'PIREPS' provide flight crews with the possibility of sharing information about
future risks. In particular, CAT reports at different altitudes offer a type of real-time turbulence
identification following aircraft. Pilots can achieve valuable situational benefits of Convective task
perception by responding to forward plane demands for a longitudinal divergence and elevation
adjustments. PIREPS is also a critical information source on approach and departure windshear at
low altitudes.

Land agencies may also identify the presence and pass on information to pilots of convective
weather activity. In order to suppress or filter out the weather returns in the signal processing phase
as a 'clutter' radar, the primary monitoring radar is used in addition to the ground-based weather
radar (where available) and in particular water droplets in the same manner as AWR and returns can
appeare on controller screen.. Dispatchers will either relay real-time satellite imagery to flight pilots,
or also transmit images directly to the aircraft.

3. Icing Management

Icing on the land is handled by three essential functions: inspection; de-icing; and anti-icing. It is critical
that airframes and engines be examined for ice and snow accumulations during the cold weather
operations with temperatures almost or less than 0 C (32 dc), in particular during rainfall and/or humid
conditions. In compliance with the instructions of the manufacturer. Large ice may have accumulated on
cold aircraft during descent and at colder ground temperatures. No ice is usually secure, but certain
procedures make minor accumulations in certain areas of the airframe.

If the icing is detected, the aircraft must be de-iced using the appropriate Standard Operating Procedure
and/or the applicable engine ice shedding procedure after de-icing, it is normal for the airline staff to
depend on the service team to make sure that the airframe is clear of ice. If more ground icing is
necessary, it is important that the de-icing procedure involves an anti-icing feature to protect the
aircraft for the period needed to taxi to the runway and take-off where the aircraft's airframe ice safety
systems can be controlled. As hypergolic propellants operate below 10 C (50 F) and warm temperatures
(visible ambient humidity) in a temperature below, there is the possibility of icing and ice protection
systems are required on intakes and cowlings (used to reduce drag and to cool the engine) The heating
test must be selected and automatically controlled as stated in the SOPs.

Pilots must pay attention to ice monitoring systems in the air and be attentive to their visible field for
slippery roads. When airframe icing is observed or suspected of occurring in flight, airframes must run
SOP ice protection systems. Engine ice protection should be applied usually in the same conditions or
under suspicious circumstances in the air as on the ground, but most manufacturers suggest that the
engine ice protection is not sufficient at outside air temperatures below minus 40 C (- 40 F).

4. Recognition
The transition to a possible LOC-I occurrence from standard stable flight may be incremental or
may be very abrupt, but in all situations there is a time of transition. It is during this time that
pilots are able to realize that all is not right and to interfere to avoid further deviation or to
return in safe flight conditions. To ensure that awareness takes place until it is too late, two
things are important.

Effective control is the first of these considerations. Both aircraft have a routine flight
monitoring provision for pilots during the entire flight but has been known for a long time.
Human beings aren't good at long-term routine monitoring. The quality and effectiveness of the
monitoring may insidiously be affected by combining boredom, complacency and distraction.
The basic trust of modern aircraft systems and flight automation ensures that pilots track
'Nothing' hour by hour, flight after flight, and it is quick for them to develop a feeling that
nothing can go on.

Pilots have been aware of reading newspapers or books during the journeys, viewing videos on
portable equipment or even falling asleep (not during the permitted monitored rest,
inadvertently) rather than carrying out the SOP's normal monitoring activities. Therefore, it will
take a while for a parameter to deviate until the pilots observe and understand it. They may be
used to variations of this nature so little that they cannot grasp what is happening, or they may
be terrified and unable to react appropriately.

The second important aspect is a clear understanding of what is 'usual' in every flight stage.
Pilots must know about the pivotal position, airspeed and attitude to be expected for different
 aircraft weights and at a range of altitudes during their climb, cruise, descent and approach.
They just expect an odd thrust in the mountain wave or the beginning of a confused attitude
easily to be noticed if prepared with this information. But the durability of this could sound
obvious again of Automation will lead, because pilots seldom need it, to degradation of the basic
information about flight parameters.

Typically, these values are available from aviation manuals, but it can be very difficult to submit
the details. A simplified data collection, a probable LOC-I precursor itself, is usually released in
irregular flight operations with inaccurate or incorrect airspeed indicators. Analyzes in the safety
study IATA 2015 found that 25% of LOC-I incidents in the period between 2011 and 2015
involved a vertical/lateral speed anomaly 'unwanted condition of aircraft,' and 21% included
outside aircraft limits. The pilots may have helped to identify these unflagging states and to
restore their normal flight thanks to an efficient control and clear awareness of parameter
values. Present manual flight instruction at high altitudes may also boost the capacity of pilots to
deal with sudden automation failure.

5. Avoidance in Flight

In compliance with the 2015 IATA Safety Report, the unwanted state of the aircraft (defined as 'a flight
crew-driven state clearly decreases safety margins'), in 16 per cent of all LOC-I incidents over the period
2011–2015, involves unnecessary weather infiltration.

Traditionally, the industry guideline has urged pilots to avoid the 20-nautical miles sideways of the
cumulonimbus convective cloud to ensure that most hazards within and across the cloud are avoided. It
also warned against flying over convective events, in particular, if the region under the clouds "anvils" or
overhangs where hail, ice and turbulence might be present, seem to be built up in height or extreme
pressure. The downwind side of the convective cloud usually extends more turbulence and precipitation
and generally flies upwind. Climbing also limits the gap between low-speed and high velocity (VMO
/MMO) in order to deter convective weather aircraft margins for the handling of some flight disruptions
or engine failure owing to convective weather experiences.

Professional pilots however realize that convective clouds occur frequently in single, easily avoidable
units and often tend to be contained in more general clouds, rather than in cells at various growth
levels. If this happens, a considerable divergence from the proposed track could be required to ensure
separation by 100 miles or more. In certain situations, because of the vicinity of other airports or limited
airspace, these broad deviations may not be allowed by air traffic controllers or because fuel may not be
adequate to make the desired deviation easier. Convective activity can range hundreds of miles in wide
areas such as the ITCZ.

In an area occupied by many convective cells at an altitude above or below cloud layer, pilots may need
to leave the "ideal" 20 nautical miles spacing gap and follow a different escape technique. AWR uses
show pressure or color to denote regions with the highest water droplet amounts and expert pilots
learn how to get through the cloud mass to prevent unnecessary turbulence. This is very unique and
Subjective procedures that are not 100% successful, though influenced by general best practice
guidelines, such as keeping upwind. Therefore, it is not unexpected how to handle convective cloud
concentration in flight, aside from extreme turbulence permeation procedures which are difficult to be
ideal for normal operations. In compliance with ATC, this should be accomplished whenever necessary,
anywhere it is important or beneficial to deviate from the route of a schedule.

Proactive flight avoidance of CAT can be more difficult because it is difficult to detect, but pilots may
prevent the greatest turbulence by calling for level change after they have been encountered or if it is
reported by aircraft ahead of them.   even some aircraft in the region may have the same concept to
avoid congestion and operating restrictions. There may be not enough fuel left or an airplane might be
too hard to climb for longer flights at a lower altitude. For pilots it would be odd to try laterally to avoid
a CAT area as the impacted area could be very wide and turbulence could be very unpredictable. The
large field horizontally and vertically in which the impact will be visible, would possibly make mountain
waves much more difficult to stop.

The use of sufficient separation intervals avoids wake vortices at arrival and departure, and it is largely
the hands of air traffic controllers. But pilots still have to be alert to meetings, even when they are in
calm or light wind, even if these distances are correctly applied.

At cruise altitudes, pilots can reduce the chance of wake vortex experiences by operating from the
centreline of the airway lateral offset, according to current wind conditions.

According to the technique of avoiding convective operation, severe airframe, engine and sensor icing is
likely to be prevented, however pilots must ensure anti-icing devices are utilized when instructed. In
most situations the anti-icing devices should be free of ice safely if used according to SOP, rather than in
the worst icing conditions in convective cloud. However, at densely enough concentrations to overcome
sample and anti-icing devices, high-altitude ice crystals can be detected – the best advice to stop them
consists of a wide downward region of large convective activity in which ice crystals can gather.

6. Reporting

It is necessary for pilots to monitor adverse weather events or any corresponding deviation or device
malfunction in order for the operators and industry together to increase awareness and understanding
of LOC-I precursors.

For instance, on multiple flights during their careers experienced ITCZ pilots may well have witnessed
turbulence as a routine. Even so, often upheavals start with some form of disruption and/or anomaly in
the flight path and could imply danger exposure by the occurrence of these non-cadastral occurrences.
Operators can communicate and learn through experiences through services like IATA STEADES.

An efficient and robust FLM software helps operators to collect useful data on flight path disruption
frequency and extent and atmospheric engine effects  or system abnormalities. Events, regional areas
and seasonal patterns Variations can expose such high-risk zones, or pilot comportments, which must be
handled by knowledge and understanding. Feedback on reports and FDM-based pilots can improve
operational awareness and understanding, in line with the concepts of a safety management system,
and inform recurring training programs.

7. Resilience
Mitigation techniques are : forecasting; sensing; avoidance; acknowledgement; monitoring, adding
another layer of organizational readiness to cope with the possibility of environmentally friendly LOC-I
incidents. A variety of future challenges are inevitably present in the global operating environment for
commercial aviation and can be best defended against them only by profound resilience. It does not
limit at predicting, identifying and preventing this multilayered operating approach, but recognizes that
pilots may have to navigate the aircraft from a potentially unsafe situation into a stable and regular
mode.