Watch in Real Time as American Airlines 1897 Tries to Escape a Hail Storm From Hell

Popular Mechanics ^ | June 6, 2018 | Joe Pappalardo

[C19fan]

American Airlines Flight 1897 met a storm from hell on Sunday. Strong updrafts tossed the aircraft and thick hail battered its body.

The incredible pictures of the plane's destroyed nose captured the world's attention. Meanwhile, though, observers on the ground captured another wild visual: the flight's meandering real-time path as pilots tried to navigate around the worst of the monster storm.

[C19fan]

Going to need a new nose cone.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Delta Flight 1889 sits at the Denver International Airport after hail damaged its nose cone ...

Tagline for a Denver flight that also recently was damaged severely. (Google images, “hail damage nose cone” )

[dragnet2]

I think this occurred over Texas...Glad I no longer need to fly.

[Zathras]

Sure glad I don’t have to fly in-out of Denver anymore.
Sometimes very scary

[dfwgator]

[Red Badger]

[Red Badger]

GMTA!...................

[mabarker1]

Nothing a tube of Spot Putty and some 1200 Wet/Dry paper won’t fix.

[C19fan]

Duct tape always works.

[dragnet2]

Windshield is completely shattered.

[Mouton]

Maybe one of the new “diversity hired” traffic controllers could not distinguish where to not send an aircraft.

[trisham]

Holy cow.

[dfwgator]

“Now arriving at Gate 10....Gate 11....Gate 12.....”

[dfwgator]

I woke up and heard on the radio we had some bad hailstorms in the area, but I didn’t hear a thing in my neck of the woods.

[Robert A Cook PE]

More background information, and many other pictures of other strikes: Both high-altitude bird strikes, low altitude bird strikes, and nose-cone hail damage are more common than I thought.

https://www.metabunk.org/explained-why-planes-get-dented-nosecones-its-mostly-birds.t9208/

[mewzilla]

I was thinking of a different c-word....but yup. 😨

[central_va]

Amazing how the turbofans are undamaged. I don’t get how that is possible. Why aren’t the engines messed up too?

[sphinx]

Watch the animated flight path at the link. Judging from the picture, it appears to be a VERY good thing that the pilot successfully avoided the worst spots.

[Red Badger]

[trisham]

I hate flying.