As Hurricane Fiona moved away from the Dominican Republic, eventually strengthening into the year’s first major Category 3 storm, more than two dozen flights were canceled from the country’s largest airport. country But one made it.
The flight, headed from Punta Cana to Newark via JetBlue on Monday afternoon, took off nearly five hours late, shortly after 7 p.m. It appeared on flight trackers as a lone craft in the midst of a swirling hurricane. It caused alarm among some weather and aviation observers and begged the question: Can you fly over a hurricane?
“I saw the JetBlue flight that apparently flew over Fiona and I will say that depending on the height of the clouds, you can fly over a hurricane,” tweeted Nick Underwood, an aerospace engineer who flies into the heart of the storms as a member of National . Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hurricane hunters to collect vital data.
But, he added, “it’s still not something I would recommend.”
It’s not unprecedented for pilots to approach or over storms, and it can be done safely, meteorologists and aviation experts said. Pilots can make decisions based on the weather in consultation with the Federal Aviation Administration and with its airline experts, as was the case Monday evening, a JetBlue spokesman said. The JetBlue flight landed safely at Newark International Airport shortly before 11pm on Monday.
Flight trackers show that several other JetBlue flights passed through Fiona Monday through Tuesday afternoon.
Although the FAA provides advisory information, it is ultimately up to the airlines and their team of meteorologists to determine whether a flight is safe enough for passengers.
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The airline had been monitoring Fiona to determine routes to safely navigate around or over the system, spokesman Derek Dombrowski said, adding that the airline had canceled many flights that could not safely depart .
“Each flight is planned by a team of experts who then monitor flight progress and weather continuously.” Dombrowski said in an email. “It is important to understand that when routing a flight both the direction and height of the weather system are factored into our decision making.”
The main hazards of flying near or through hurricanes include lightning, hail and winds, which are strongest near the center of a storm and vary in direction around it. There is also concern about updrafts: strong, vertically oriented wind gusts present in any type of storm. A 2011 FAA report warns of the possibility of “violent turbulence anywhere within 20 miles of very strong thunderstorms.”
“An aircraft when it is high enough can safely fly over a hurricane as long as it avoids the individual thunderstorms that are sometimes found on the side of the hurricane,” a spokesman for the Professional Pilots Association told The Post , a non-profit group through which pilots discuss safety. .
Even so, those near-term conditions probably wouldn’t make for a pleasant flight, said Randy Bass, a certified consulting meteorologist who runs Bass Weather Services.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be on that flight,” Bass said.
Fiona was a Category 2 hurricane with maximum winds of 110 mph at its core as of Monday evening, according to the National Hurricane Center. The data shows that the height of its clouds would have made it difficult for any aircraft to avoid it.
At the time of the flight, clouds around the eye of the hurricane reached 45,000 feet, while the outer edges of the storm were between about 33,000 and 39,000 feet, according to satellite data. Category 2 hurricane clouds generally reach altitudes of about 33,000 to 46,000 feet.
A map of JetBlue Flight 1016 from Flightradar24 shows that the Airbus A320 was flying at altitudes between about 30,000 feet and 34,000 feet when it passed near Fiona.
Even for hurricane chasers, safety is a primary consideration when planning routes to and around hurricanes. The team, which collects data used to better understand and predict hurricanes, flies its Lockheed WP-3D Orion jets into the heart of storms at altitudes between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. To scout conditions above and around hurricanes, it flies its Gulfstream IV-SP jet at 41,000 to 45,000 feet, spokesman Jonathan Shannon said.
Shannon said it would be difficult to estimate how high any plane would need to be above a storm to avoid turbulence, noting that “every storm can be different.”
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Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico on Sunday, leaving nearly 600,000 residents without power before moving into the neighboring Dominican Republic. Hours before the flight, up to 20 inches of rain was recorded in the eastern part of the Dominican Republic, where the Punta Cana airport is stationed, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The NHC also warned of urban flooding and life-threatening flooding in the region.