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Advantages Of Aircrafts Flying At
High Altitude
Why Do Airplanes Need To Fly So High?
Avinash
Shrivastava
Now, this
is a question that comes to everyone’s mind.
Sane
scientific mind at least, that why does an airplane fly at such high altitude.
I mean having an obstacle-free path is good enough.
An
airplane can fly at that altitude, can’t they? Well, the answer is yes, but
then there would be some unviable issues with it which we will be discussing in
the current article.
In order
to reach high altitude, the airplane has to use a lot of engine power. We know
that an airplane engine is a power machine and consumes lots of fuel for its
operations.
The
aircraft has to maintain a minimum forward velocity while climbing, this also
makes it enter into a thinner atmosphere.
Additional
engine resources are required for pressurizing the cabin so that passengers can
have a safe and healthy flight.
Air
Density plays a pivotal role in the complete aircraft operation.
When
aircrafts fly at very high altitude they require less fuel to operate than that
at lower altitudes.
Now here
we have to take this into consideration that most of the commercial jetliners
are running on jet engines.
Jet
engines in order to operate require a mix of the fuel-air mixture known as
stoichiometric ratio.
What this
means broadly is that the ratio of fuel to air molecules have to be precise in
order to reach maximum operational efficiency.
As the
altitude increases the air becomes thin.
Or in
other words, the density of air would decrease resulting in a lower number of
air molecules entering into the system.
As a
consequence, the number of fuel molecules entering the engine will also have to
be lowered to match the number of air molecules.
Ultimately
this results in a lower amount of fuel be burned to be operationally effective.
Hence it
can be concluded that at higher altitude the aircraft becomes more fuel
efficient hence more economical too.
Now, this
is one reason, secondly, as the aircraft reaches the higher altitude the air
friction on the aircraft also decreases hence enhancing the overall fuel
economy of the aircraft.
Aircrafts
apart from the above-mentioned reason, also fly high in the sky as a safety
precaution.
You see
when you fly too high then the chances of hitting an obstacle are minimal.
The
aircraft frame is actually very sensitive to hits at high speeds that even a
bird hitting an aircraft can be disastrous. Hence, flying high reduces such
risks.
Also, at
high altitude, the exposure to the weather-related phenomenon is pretty less.
Imagine a
thunderstorm brewing up. No aircraft pilot would want to risk his plane getting
stuck in such a weather.
It is
hazardous for the airplane, hence flying high also takes care of running into
extreme weather situations.
The
element of safety is also applicable to flying at high altitudes.
Most of
the modern aircrafts are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they have the
fail-safe mechanism for most of the issues that can crop up in flight, provided
the pilot has time in his hand to rectify the situation.
He can
only have ample time in his hand when he is flying at high altitude and there
is a window period between taking corrective measure and hitting the ground.
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