Why Is Aviation And Fog Such A Bad Mix?

DISCUSSION: Around the world every day, there are major issues when it comes to airports and private and/or commercial aircraft dealing with various types of fog. First and foremost, the more common types of fog which include ground fog and advection fog, will often create substantially reduced visibilities in and around area airports during such circumstances. Reduced visibilities are a major hazard to approaching and departing aircraft since such conditions can make simple aircraft functionality a very dangerous precedent. More specifically, when it comes to flying through or around fog banks early in the morning or at night, there can often be points at which the fog is present at variable concentrations from top to bottom. For that reason, the idea of flying through a fog bank can be even more concerning since the unpredictable variability of a fog bank’s thickness can lead to a pilot or set of pilots being unable to see the runway.

Even with state-of-the-art technologies built into modern aircraft and various tools which allow pilots to more easily handle flying through various types of inclement weather, deep fog can still be especially dangerous to any type of private or commercial aircraft. Therefore, any time that pilots are confronted with situations which involve deep fog banks and must abort an approach and landing at a given airport, do not get frustrated with your pilots since there is a good chance that they had a very legitimate reason for aborting the landing and making another approach from a different direction.

Another issue tied to the presence of fog and corresponding flight delays is very much like the issues faced by airports with any other type of inclement weather situation. That is, the reality that any situations involving persistent fog will often lead to scenarios where there are corresponding flight delays. Thus, a deep, persistent fog bank can create substantial regional, national, or possibly even global flight delay issues for some period as a result of passengers not being able to make subsequent flights and planes being forced to wait for the arrival of large numbers of passengers from delayed flights. Thus, this just goes to show that there is always a corresponding impact which can be observed in a statistical manner with respect to flight delays from regional fog events.

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© 2019 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz