American flight #1897 diverts due to hail damage.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

[Laffy Kat]

1. Whoa. Interesting to listen to.

Glad I wasn't aboard that flight.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. I wonder if the pilot will be in trouble for flying through a bad cell.

They have onboard radar to avoid that stuff

[Laffy Kat]

6. It can happen so quickly.

I am a glider pilot and on one of my more memorable flights, on a wonderful day to be soaring, I witnessed a thunderhead developing around me. By the time I realized what was going on, the thermals were so tremendous, I had trouble getting down. No sooner than I was on the ground, the winds whipped up, the rain started (now there were down-drafts, LOL). It took all hands on deck at the glider port to get both my gilder and one other tied down so they wouldn't blow away. Ground crew wouldn't let me out of ship until I was tied down and by then there was also lightening. It happens.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

9. I might be reading the storm overlay wrong but it looks like they flew in to developed cells.

Have you seen this?

[Laffy Kat]

10. Gosh, no, I had not seen that footage before.

What a long time for a microburst to last! When I landed that day the storm thunderstorm hit there was a few minutes when a couple of ground crew threw themselves on my wing to keep it down and thus keeping me from flipping. The glider I was flying was not nearly as sexy as those fiberglass ships on that footage. I was flying a clunky trainer.

The gliderport from the footage looks like the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. I flew out of Black Forest which is close to the AFA.

Thanks for sharing.

[Major Nikon]

11. They may have thought they could top it, or they were far enough away from the cell

A thunderstorm can easily throw hail 20 miles away from the cell.

[redwitch]

2. How do they remain so incredibly calm?

Yikes! No medical need but nightmares coming up I would think.

[Laffy Kat]

5. Might have something to do with all the simulations they train through.

They have checklists and protocols for everything and muscle memory from those sessions kicks in. I mean, I guess. Same kind of questions I have always had about surgeons. Takes a certain kind of personality.

[redwitch]

7. It does.

Always good to have calm, competent people around in a crisis.

[Major Nikon]

8. Once it's over and the plane is still flying, not much to get excited about

The crew would be too busy running checklists, talking to ATC, and preparing for an emergency landing to get too excited.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Saw pics of this on Weather Channel the other day...

scary stuff.