Exchanging Windshear Experience Aloft

It is an important ingredient for any successful service to maintain a close communication channel and collaborative relationship with its clients. The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) has been keeping a tight contact with the relevant parties during the design and development stages for the provision of windshear alerting service, including pilots.

To improve further the communication between HKO staff and pilots and to study how to further enhance the windshear alerting service, HKO staff visited the Airbus A330/340 Flight Simulators at the training centre of the Dragonair located at Chek Lap Kok in December last year. The exchange visit was invaluable in obtaining first hand experience in the response of an aircraft under various simulated windshear environment and appreciate how the pilots can control the aircraft to obtain safe landing/takeoff. On the other hand, through deep discussions with Dragonair's trainer on the technical matters, the visit helps to further enhance the Observatory's windshear techniques to provide better tailor-made windshear service to the pilots.

Trainer Captain Digger Blandford (right) of Dragonair explains to HKO staff how to operate the flight simulator