Aviation2Day

Windshear: Why a Sudden Change in Wind Can Kill an Approach Meteorology · Hazards · Operations Windshear: Why a Sudden Change in Wind Can Kill an Approach Windshear has destroyed more aircraft on final approach than almost any other weather phenomenon. It is invisible, fast-acting, and capable of overwhelming an aircraft before a crew can respond. Understanding its mechanics — and the procedures built around it — is not academic. It is survival. May 2026  ·  11 min read On 2 August 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 — a Lockheed L-1011 on approach to Dallas/Fort Worth — flew through a microburst. The aircraft hit the ground 1,000 feet short of runway 17L. 137 of the 163 people on board were killed. The NTSB's investigation fundamentally changed how aviation understood, detected, and responded to low-level windshear. It was not the first windshear accident, and it was not the last — but it was the one that made the hazard impossible ...

Supersonic Aerodynamics: What Changes When You Break the Sound Barrier Aerodynamics · Supersonic Flight Supersonic Aerodynamics: What Changes When You Break the Sound Barrier Subsonic aerodynamics is a world of smooth pressure gradients and gradual transitions. Cross Mach 1 and the physics change categorically — shockwaves, wave drag, and thermal loads rewrite every design assumption. Here's what actually happens, and why it matters. May 2026  ·  10 min read On 14 October 1947, Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 over the Mojave Desert and did something no human had verifiably done before: he flew faster than sound. The aircraft didn't disintegrate. The sky didn't fall. What happened instead was far more interesting — a new set of aerodynamic rules snapped into effect, rules that engineers had been trying to model theoretically for a decade and that Yeager's flight finally confirmed in practice. Nearly eighty years l...

TKS Weeping Wing: How Does a Liquid Film Actually Protect You from Ice? Airframe Systems · Icing TKS Weeping Wing: How Does a Liquid Film Actually Protect You from Ice? Unlike bleed-air boots or pneumatic systems, TKS doesn't heat or break ice — it chemically prevents it from bonding in the first place. Here's exactly how it works, what it can handle, and where it runs out of answers. April 2026  ·  8 min read TKS has been around since World War II — originally developed to protect Royal Air Force aircraft from icing — and it remains one of the most widely used de-icing systems on general aviation and regional turboprop aircraft today. The principle is elegantly simple: pump a glycol-based fluid through a porous titanium panel on the leading edge, let it weep out across the surface, and stop ice from ever getting a grip. But "simple principle" and "simple operation" are not the same thing. TKS has specific o...

EGPWS: How Does It Actually Keep You Away From the Ground? EGPWS - SYSTEM BRIEFING EGPWS: How Does It Actually Keep You Away From the Ground? The system generates alerts that save lives every year — but do you fully understand what it's doing, how it decides to warn you, and where it falls short? April 2026  ·  9 min read Most pilots have heard "TERRAIN, TERRAIN — PULL UP" at some point, whether in the simulator or on the line. But EGPWS is more than an alarm. It is a continuously running terrain model built around your aircraft, and understanding its logic makes you a significantly better operator of it. This article walks through what the system actually does, how the enhanced look-ahead function differs from classic GPWS, how to read the terrain display, what the correct response is — and where the system has limits you cannot afford to ignore. GPWS vs. EGPWS: The Key Difference The original Ground Proximity Warn...