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Wouldn't a headwind increase the airspeed of the plane?
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Yes. What happens in a microburst is that the plane flies into a headwind caused by the downdraft spreading out in all directions, which increases its airspeed. The pilot (if he's not pre-warned by ground radar) reduces power to maintain airspeed, then flies through the middle and out the other side into a tailwind area, whereupon he suddenly finds himself short of airspeed, lift and thrust and has a close encounter with the ground (fitting with the witness accounts of a sudden drop). They're very nasty things, microbursts, caused a lot of crashes in the US, where weather is more severe.
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"Hey Jeff, what's this lever marked 'air brake' do?"
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Very nasty Air Canada DC-8 crash back in the day caused by just that - co-pilot pulled the air brakes out, dropped the plane onto the runway, broke an engine off, captain put on power and tried to go around but the fuel escaping from the wing caused an explosion and that was the end of that.
---------- Post added at 17:04 ---------- Previous post was at 17:01 ----------
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it was a real miracle that all survived and walked away to tell their stories.
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It was lucky it didn't happen 100ft or so further back, where the last approach light gantry is. We drove down to Heathrow T4 to collect some foreign cash two weeks ago and I remember pointing at the planes going just over the car into 27L to my son, who likes planes - they virtually seem to fly along parallel to you and then scream right over the roof. The consequences of a 777 coming down on the A30 or ripping through the lighting gantries would have been substantially less pleasant than what transpired.