Flight and Environmental Risks

 Weather Hazards     Aircraft are exposed to many weather risks when flying.  Changes in pressure, icing, wind, and temperature variances all effect flight and impose levels of risk to the pilots and aircraft.  I believe the biggest risk that pilot's face when flying is wind shear.  Wind shear is a vertical or horizontal change in the speed of wind.  Often associated with thunderstorms and a product of down drafts or microbursts of air accelerating towards earth and then splaying out in different directions, wind shear can have detrimental effects on flight.       Wind shear is exceptionally dangerous when flying in close proximity to hazards such as changes in terrain or on landing and takeoff.  A violent shift in wind direction can result in the loss of lift and an attitude change of the aircraft.  Wind shear in itself is also very difficult to detect.  Modern WXR (weather radar) systems have the ability to analyze wind speeds and direction and then determine that the potential f

 Air Traffic Control Entities     Air Traffic Control is a multi-faceted operation.  Air traffic requires management from multiple different areas.  The purpose of Air Traffic Control is to manage the flow of traffic and prevent a collision between two or more aircraft. (PHAK, 2016). Two different avenues of management for ATC are the ARTCC and Ground control.  ARTCC stands for Air Route Traffic Control Center.  ARTCC's primary responsibility is managing the flow of traffic in certain airspace.  There are 21 of these centers and they cover an airspace of up to 100,000 nautical miles.  The responsibility to direct flow of traffic and ensure seamless transition between each center as a "hand-off" is crucial to the safety of flight.     Ground control is similar to the ARTCC as it's responsibility is again to ensure there are no collisions between moving aircraft; however, they are responsible for orchestrating this movement "on the ground" at airports where no

  Environmental Impacts of Airfield Operations     As air travel has increasingly grown over the last century, the planning and design of airports to mitigate environmental impacts has become an ever-increasing challenge.  Air pollution and grown contamination from fuel are massive concerns for citizens in heavily populated areas that surround airports.  Along with concern for environmental pollution, air traffic induced noise has become an obstacle that many airports face.       Mitigation efforts have been utilized by many airports to reduce the amount of noise affecting the population in the local area of the airport.  Take off and arrival trajectory has been one of the means that airports are utilizing to reduce the effects of noise on citizens. (Visser, 2008).  By adjusting the direction aircraft approach the airfield and the direction they depart can help reduce the number of individuals that are exposed to a high noise environment. When I was stationed at RAF Mildenhall in the U