World Geography and Special Related Weather Hazards

How are strong winds instrumental in creating dust storms that produced hazards to aircrews?

Sandstorms occur when winds strengthen to the point where they're able to lift grains of sand off the ground and blow them through the air. They tend to happen most frequently in sandy areas, such as deserts. Sandstorms can arise quickly and without much warning. Wind speeds as low as 25 miles per hour can cause sandstorms which can then result in reduced visibility conditions, erosion, and mechanical breakdowns in aircraft.

A specific example where a wind storm presented as a fatal threat to aviation is in the case of United Arab Airlines Flight 749, which crashed due to a failed diversion of the aircraft through sandstorms in Cairo, Egypt, The Press Courier describes. Sand and dust storms are difficult to predict with radar because of how quickly they can arise. Pilots can be cautious when flying in higher-risk areas when the winds are especially high that day. There is no technology however for commercial and general aviation aircraft to fly through sand storms (on purpose), as pilots tend to avoid flying near sand storms altogether.

Pilot Grant Opperman describes his own personal horror story of being caught in an unexpected dust storm mid-flight. He describes that "With the plane rocking in the gusts, I throttled to full power, released the brakes, and struggled to maintain centerline as my plane accelerated. Then, I rotated and instantly shot into a dense cloud of dirt. It was a blackness completely different than just the dark of a night sky. Every time my strobe flashed, a snow globe of dark particles revealed itself, followed instantly by that darkness again. My sidestick pushed left, right, up, and down against the invisible gusts... “Keep your eyes on the instruments,” I yelled out loud to myself, again and again. I was, what, 100 feet from the ground? Less? More? Who knew? It was all I could do to keep flying the plane..." (Opperman, 2016). Thankfully, he made it through the layer of thick sand and dust and lived to tell the story.

References

Opperman, G. (2016, December 18). Lessons learned: Date with a dust storm. Plane & Pilot Magazine. https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/lessons-learned-dust-storm/#.WsPfrdPwaEI

The Press Courier. (n.d.). Plane Crashes in Sandstorm; fear 30 perish. Google News Archive Search. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mwxSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9TQNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6637%2C3356541&dq=nicosia%2Bplane%2Bcrash&hl=en

What causes sandstorms? WonderOpolis. (n.d.). https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-causes-sandstorms#:~:text=Sandstorms%20occur%20when%20winds%20strengthen,common%20in%20the%20Sahara%20Desert.

YouTube. (2013, May 14). Plane Flies into Sandstorm Rafha, Saudi Arabia. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/