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When aircraft descend through below-freezing temperatures and high relative humidity (saturated air), they can create snow. Planes aren’t causing snowstorms – just a localized event – but under the right conditions they do cause snow to form and fall to the ground.
Friday’s Denver to Omaha United flight 1279 landed at around 4:45 p.m. – but appears to have been on the ground for over an hour before making it to the gate. The flight landed during a tornado warning. While it sat on the tarmac, a tornado hit the ground at 5:08 p.m.
The airport was temporarily shut down to evaluate the extent of the storm’s impact. The main terminal remained intact, but general aviation on the eastern side of the airport suffered damage.
When a flight delays, airlines almost always blame weather. Factors outside of their control mean they don’t owe you anything, like a hotel to spend the night in or meals at the airport. But American Airlines CEO Robert Isom now says that when his airline fails to recover from problems, that’s on them and they owe their customers. That’s a sea change, following on the Southwest Airlines debacle over the holidays. But not everyone in the company’s customer service department may be ready to change.
Lavatory ice (‘blue juice’) isn’t the only snow that planes cause to descend from the sky. When aircraft descend through below-freezing temperatures and high relative humidity (saturated air), they can create snow. Planes aren’t causing snowstorms – just a localized event – but under the right conditions they do cause snow to form and fall to the ground.
This requires water vapor that’s below freezing but that doesn’t form ice crystals because it lacks the particulates on which to freeze.
With temperatures below freezing and saturated air (high relative humidity) aircraft descending to land can cause snow. It’s a very localized event, not widespread snow, but snow can form and then fall as a result of planes descending under the right conditions.
This requires “supercooled atmosphere interacting with exhaust” and “water vapor [that is] below freezing but [that] couldn’t entirely transition into ice crystals because of a lack of particulates upon which to freeze.” Then the plane descending through the atmosphere causes snow to form.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
