{"id":2511,"date":"2015-01-14T12:43:56","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T12:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/?p=2511"},"modified":"2015-01-14T12:44:53","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T12:44:53","slug":"how-a-strong-jet-stream-is-affecting-aviation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/how-a-strong-jet-stream-is-affecting-aviation\/","title":{"rendered":"How a strong jet stream is affecting aviation"},"content":{"rendered":"

We often talk about the\u00a0jet stream<\/a>\u00a0and its impacts on UK<\/a> weather \u2013 but it can have an even more direct effect on aviation as covered in the media in recent days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beverley Goodwin<\/a><\/p>\n

The jet stream is a band of fast moving winds high up (around 5-7 miles) in the atmosphere. It usually travels eastwards around the northern hemisphere but regularly changes its track and strength.<\/p>\n

Pilots travelling east, say from the US<\/a> back to Europe, use the jet stream to cut journey times and save fuel \u2013 just like a cyclist uses a tailwind on a bike.<\/p>\n

This has always meant journey times in the northern hemisphere are faster when travelling east than heading west (when airlines avoid the jet stream).<\/p>\n

Recently the jet stream has been particularly strong over the north Atlantic, with winds of more than 250mph being seen at times.<\/p>\n

This has had an impact on flying times \u2013 with eastbound trans-Atlantic services arriving well in advance of\u00a0their scheduled times. Some types of passenger aircraft\u00a0have reputedly seen record breaking journey times.<\/p>\n

All this of course has a knock-on effect for airports as schedules are carefully planned to ensure\u00a0there\u2019s room, not to mention boarding gates, for each aircraft when it\u2019s due to land. That has meant the strong jet stream creates a logistical challenge for airports across Europe.<\/p>\n

The Met Office<\/a> has been helping\u00a0airlines and airports to plan ahead with its forecasts of the strength of the jet stream through its role as a\u00a0World Aviation Forecasting Centre (WAFC)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are only two WAFC centres in the world; the UK and Washington, in the US. The two centres provide aviation charts for the globe, highlighting conditions between 10,000 and 63,000 feet.<\/p>\n

These charts show the location\u00a0and strength of the jet stream, as well as other important aviation factors, such as clear air turbulence, cumulonimbus (storm producing) clouds, volcanoes and tropical storms. Both centres operate 24 hours a day and throughout the year.<\/p>\n

Airlines use our upper-air wind forecasts to predict flight times at cruising altitude. For transatlantic flights during 2012, the average difference between the predicted flight time and the actual flight time was about one minute. This means that our aviation customers can accurately calculate the fuel load required for each flight. Our WAFC charts save airlines globally \u00a32.7 billion a year because our forecasts help them fly safely and efficiently.<\/p>\n

Accurate forecasts enable pilots, airlines and airports to assess flying times in advance and use that information to try to ensure things run as efficiently as possible on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Met Office<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We often talk about the\u00a0jet stream\u00a0and its impacts on UK weather \u2013 but it can have an even more direct effect on aviation as covered in the media in recent days. Beverley Goodwin The jet stream is a band of fast moving winds high up (around 5-7 miles) in the atmosphere. It usually travels eastwards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"post_views_count":1102,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[169,282],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weather","tag-resort-uk","tag-resort-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}