On May 5th, 2019, Aeroflot Flight 1492 is scheduled to fly from Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow to Murmansk Airport, in Russia. With 73 passengers and five crew on board, the pilots completed their pre-flight checks and lined up on the runway. At 18:03 they took off and began their climb. It was a little bumpy, but they’d handled worse. Five minutes later, however, a deafening boom rocked the entire plane.
All of a sudden the plane jolted, the primary radio went dead, and the autopilot became inoperative. But it was okay, the pilots knew this was a minor electrical failure, nothing major. What they didn’t know though, was that in less than 30 minutes, the life of every passenger on board would be on the line. Not just because of what the pilots were about to do, oh no, because of the dangerous decisions the passengers themselves made next.
That fateful day, as they were lining up on the runway, Flight 1492 had found themselves, facing towering cumulonimbus clouds, better known to me and you as thunderstorm clouds. While passenger planes are designed to handle stormy conditions, pilots can request storm avoidance clearance, a kind of navigational assistance given by air traffic controllers to help them avoid the worst of the turbulence and any electrical disturbances from lightning. But Flight 1492 didn’t……Read Full Story Here…….
