(Flickr/James Willamor)
A US Airways/American Airlines Airbus A321 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Federal Investigators have launched an investigation into an incident involving an American Airlines jet last week at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
American Airlines Flight 1851 struck several runway lights and the tail of the jet slammed into the runway while attempting to land in Charlotte.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the crew of the American Airlines flight reportedly encountered wind shear (sudden shifts in wind direction or speed over a small distance) shortly before touching down at the airport.
However, according to a story by the Wall Street Journal's Andy Pasztor, the weather encountered by Flight 1851 wasn't just any wind shear, but a particularly nasty weather phenomenon called a microburst.
"A microburst is a form of windshear. It's an intense, localized downburst of air from a storm front," airline pilot Patrick Smith told Business Insider in an email. "The column of cold air plummets, then moves outward in different directions — think of it like a kind of upside down mushroom cloud."
According to Smith, who is author of the book Cockpit Confidential, microbursts are particularly dangerous because they can cause unsafe fluctuations in speed and direction – making the aircraft incredibly difficult to control.
Shifting suddenly between headwinds and tailwinds, microbursts can cause planes to suddenly gain and lose altitude and speed, all within a matter of seconds. It's rare for an aircraft to fly into one anymore, thanks to modern technology used by airports and pilots, but that wasn't always the case.
As with any weather event, the severity and the amount of danger microbursts pose to airplanes can vary greatly.
"The potency of a microburst runs the range of barely noticeable to potentially deadly," Smith added. "When airplanes are taking off or landing, they operate very close to their minimum allowable speeds, and encountering a strong shear at this point is dangerous — at higher speeds it's not of such concern."
(REUTERS/ C. Inton)
In this case, the pilots of the Airbus A321 — operated for American Airlines by US Airways — decided to abandon the initial landing attempt, but safely landed on a second try.
Fortunately, no injuries have been reported among the 159 passengers and crew onboard Flight 1851. Although the NTSB reported that the aircraft suffered "substantial damage" and — according to a statement from American Airlines — has been taken out of service.