Influence of Windshear on Flight Safety

Wind shear during take-off and landing may crucially restrict flight safety. In some rare situations, especially during take-off, hazards may be caused by limited flight performance. In most cases wind shear accidents and incidents result from the fact that the wind shear phenomenon is not understood by the pilot due to his training condition and the cockpit instrumentation. In such situations the pilot is not able to act in the correct way. Therefore it can be suspected that a considerable amount of wind shear accidents will be interpreted wrongly as pilots errors. Numerous investigations have been made in order to solve the wind shear problem. Many of these proposals will fail because the physical phenomena are not understood completely, neither by the pilots nor by the investigators of the wind shear warning system. This problem will be illuminated by the fact that some of the correct safety procedures in wind shear contradict the pilots feeling of how to control an aircraft. This paper tries to clarify step by step some physical backgrounds of the wind shear phenomena including adequate flight safety procedures to overcome the problems.