.In hindsight it might be easy to look at it like that. But a part of the story that came out relativliy late, which adds perspective (besides being a pilot that has transversed, like thousands of others each day)was that he had just diverted around, to the left of one and then (radar in airplanes are forward viewing -) so if we back him up 20 minutes he saw system one ahead of him, diverted, and it looks as if coming around that a 600 mile (BBC) wide beast was on the other side of it. But becasue he just went around a big one he knew what was now behind him so it stuck me as it might have been kinda of like uturn and go right back into the one behind me or do the same with the one ahead of me.
BUt the real interesting thing that came out later was that in between the first and second one was a area of clear, super duper chilled air . See the white small area directly in front of them- that is the supercooled downdraft area.
Basically it is water droplets that are at freezing temp that have not frozen yet but do so instantly when hitting a object. Aircraft are very sensitive to ice on their surfaces - it interupts airflow and alters lift and drag. So imagine suddenly your wings are iceing at rapid and unsucpected rate, a beast is before you.
In areas where the super cooled droplets are is usually accompanied by down drafts. So in addition to the above he might have been hit when downdrafts as well. THe supercooled water would do the same when landing on the surface of the engines, (did one flame out?) so all his flying dynamics are changing, not for the good, quickly and this is before he got out of the supercooled area and attempted to penetrate the monster ahead of him.
We got to remember they are flying! Look what is ahead of him after the super cooled part, red bad part! Follwed by the purple black awful awful awful stuff. SO in a really short peroid of time these guys were slammed. It had to be a really scary ride for everyone as well.
Lets say the poor guys were busy. IT sure seems from where the wreckage was found, that they actually appearred to have kept an aircraft in extreme distress relativily stable for some two minutes - quite a feat it seems.
THey will both still get nailed tho investigative wise, with proceeding, but as long as the recorders were recording you guys are going to see how amazing this process is. We will know every single second, what happened, what knobs were clicked, what alarms were blaring, if it was raining, pouring, hailing, windsheild blownout, depresurazatoion, what the airplane itself was doing, what the flight crew thought was happening. Keep following, at least until the preliminary readout.
They usually make a animation from the prelimnary readouts (should be in the next two days if they were not damaged and recording) we all shall know all, in terms of the basics soon..........................
I'd like to be able to say I'm shocked and mortified that any airline allows flights to go through weather like that, but a friend flew to the Philippines right after Thanksgiving and was scheduled to begin his return trip the day the super typhoon was crossing his flight path to Manilla, neither airline he flew (to Manilla and then out of) altered one flight schedule and would not allow passengers to reschedule without a hefty fee. But the fact that so many flights were in the air that planes cannot even fly around these storms is just asking for disasters of this nature. So many lives lost and families left bereft, there just aren't words for the sadness and anger this inspires.
