that is not due to climat change or weather getting more severe, as far as i remember back in my career it always was and will be the same challenges - especially severe thunderstorms, winds and the combination thereof like taifuns and hurricans.
the limit of flying is usually not the maximum windspeed, which in case of 747 can be up to 25 knots at 90 degrees on a wet runway (severe wind usually comes with water...), but more likely with the spread of average wind and gusts, which can exceed the operating limits of staying above reference speed Vref, which is minimum approach speed, and the maximum flaps placard speed Vfe, which is the limitimg speed for the established flaps setting.
to protect the flaps the 747 is equipped with a flap load protection system that reduces the flaps setting automatically if the max speed is exceeded. if that happens or the speed drops significantly below the minimum speed vref the stabilized approach criteria of our (and most) company demands a go-around.
wasting 2.5 to 3.5 t of fuel in a go-around rapidly brings you to the ulltimate decision of trying another time or diverting to the alternate, which in most cases means two tries and then diverting.
that of course always means a lot of extra work, especially after landing, when the organization of bringing the aircraft back to the originally planned destination causes huge ruptures in duty times of the crew, the need for mechanics and fuel as well as a lot of paperwork...
for passenger airlines it is even more demanding since they also see the need of booking hotel rooms for some 200 to 600 people, depending on the aircraft size, on short notice - imagine some glowing phone lines in the process and maybe you get a better understanding of the work involved if it happens to you someday!
less dramatic are thunderstrikes that happen regularly to aircraft usualy with no or minor damage. like a car all aircraft have to establish a faraday cage (also the new carbonfibre ones have some metal wires woven in for that!) protecting all occupants and the electronics as well. the usual strike enters through the radom of the weather radar in the nose and exits through the ionised air in the hot engine exhaust.
we simply leave a note in the techlog of the aircraft after landing and technicians search for the entry and exit to assess the damage and only in rare cases there are minor punctures to be found which can be patched easily, most of the time there is no damage at all.
in my flying life i get struck about every three years while flying an average of 550 hours a year and i'm still alive ;-)
pictures below are shot from my hotelroom in shanghai during an extended stay since our flight out was postponed by a taifun rattling the flooded city. it was practically impossible to leave the hotel with pouring rain and high windspeeds, the whole skyscraper bending and swinging a few centimeters!
and a nice thunderstrike from austria that caused a larger fire hitting a barn.
brgds
nuck
