How extreme weather & grounded planes raise risks in aviation
What lessons can the aviation insurance industry draw from the pandemic and past years of extreme weather?
The combination of significant grounding of aircraft and more frequent extreme weather events have contributed to a change in the profile of aviation claims in the U.S. and beyond.
When considering the extreme weather that is likely to impact the aviation industry, many will first think of lightning. While lightning clearly presents a potential hazard to aircraft, wind, hail and thunderstorms also do. Flooding, too, has become a concern over the past few years as weather events appear to become more extreme and prevalent.
The sudden and unexpected nature of some storms can prevent manufacturers and owners from taking the necessary steps to protect aircraft in time to avoid damage. While hurricanes can be tracked and planned for in advance, sudden and unexpected thunderstorms can turn out to be much more severe than expected or originally reported.
We have seen winds forecasted to be 20 mph suddenly rise to 50 mph or greater and softball-sized hail falls from the sky. It is difficult to protect against such weather events due to the unexpected nature of some storms.
Microbursts, tornados, and earthquakes are other — albeit less frequent — weather events that have previously been the source of claims and severe damage to aircraft.
What damage do they cause to aircraft/?
Claims, of course, vary in size and scale of damage. We have handled losses where a microburst destroyed a hangar at a large airport, affecting five corporate aircraft parked in and around the hangar. In this instance, all five aircraft were damaged beyond repair due to the impact with large structural beams from the hangar.
Damage that we deal with on a more regular basis includes dents from hail, which can vary in scale and depth. This ranges from minor repairs to an aircraft’s surface due to small dents to very expensive replacement of large fuselage skins and flight controls caused by a large number of dents and extreme depth on the skin panels.
Large thunderstorms can produce very high winds which move aircraft from their parking chocks and cause collisions with other aircraft, ground equipment, buildings or blow objects into the aircraft. Additionally, these storms can sometimes produce the damaging hail mentioned previously.
Lightning strikes, both on the ground and in the air, can vary significantly in the damage caused to the aircraft. We have seen minor burning damage to the static wicks, which are designed to dissipate the energy and prevent damage to sensitive electronics and radios, in addition to severe burning damage to an aircraft’s external structure, and internal damage to the radios and avionics. Lightning can magnetize internal components on propellers and engines, which require their removal from the aircraft, disassembly and detailed inspections.
While seen less often, we also handle claims wherein aircraft are damaged by tornados and flooding, and when these events occur near an airport or a large number of parked aircraft, numerous aircraft can be substantially damaged due to water intrusion, impact with other aircraft, or other extreme circumstances.
The challenges of remaining grounded
Whilst the general pattern is that aircraft are equally vulnerable on the ground as in the air, in flight, there’s clearly no risk of flooding and pilots can often detect extreme weather events such as storms and fly around them.
When aircraft are parked on the ground, or in a hangar, it is much more difficult to move them to safety during a sudden and unexpected storm. This challenge was significantly magnified due to the large grounding of aircraft during the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent fleet groundings due to maintenance issues.
In addition to limited travel during the pandemic grounding most commercial aircraft, we have also seen certain aircraft types grounded by government regulators.
The combination of mass grounding and more extreme weather events vastly increases parked aircrafts’ exposure to extreme weather. When aircraft are in service, exposure for any one manufacturer and owner is distributed around the globe.
Managing the risk
Grounded aircraft are parked in the lowest risk locations. The desert is often preferable for storage given its mild weather and low humidity and, as such, hundreds of aircraft have been stored in places such as large storage facilities in New Mexico.
This created a unique phenomenon during the pandemic since large numbers of operational aircraft were parked around the globe, sometimes in areas or locations that were not optimum for aircraft safety.
When aircraft are operating normally and distributed around the country or region, weather patterns can be monitored closely and where it becomes clear that parked aircraft might be in the path of an extreme weather event, those aircraft can sometimes be relocated. This was not possible during the recent mass groundings and the large number of parked aircraft, combined with the changing weather conditions, produced numerous wind, hail and other storm claims.
What can U.S. aviation expect going forward?
More aircraft are being placed back into service daily, reducing the risk of large scale weather-related damage on the ground. The pandemic, however, has served as a stark reminder of aircrafts’ exposure to extreme weather when they remain on the ground for prolonged periods, and valuable lessons from this will be kept in mind as we look to mitigate similar risks in the future.
Brett Bergeron is senior aviation surveyor — manager Houston, McLarens Aviation.
Opinions expressed here are the author’s own.
Related: