Bad weather forced flight to be cancelled
I refer to the letter by Peter Lok (“Flight changes for Haima not handled well”, November 13) about a flight cancellation during the close approach of Severe Typhoon Haima on October 21, in reply to the letter from the Observatory (“No 8 signal for Haima raised on public safety concerns amid gales”, November 4).
Mr Lok pointed out that probing the interior of a typhoon could assist decision-making during the typhoon’s passage.
This is indeed an endeavour that the Observatory has been making in cooperation with the Government Flying Service (GFS) since 2009.
Even though we would very much like to engage GFS flights for every typhoon, it is not always possible as it depends on multiple factors, including the availability of the aircraft (which has a primary role to carry out life-saving operations such as search and rescue), air traffic conditions, the availability of departure runway slots, and the weather.
In the past couple of years, data collected on these flights was found useful in the operation of the typhoon warning and in increasing the accuracy of weather predictions.
In the case of Haima, the GFS flight into the typhoon had to be cancelled as the projected weather condition was unsuitable to landing on completion of the flight. This is understandable as all data collection flight missions should be carried out under controllable and safe conditions.