I see lots of videos where planes (so their pilots..) struggle while they are landing because of air conditions. so if windy air is problem for plane, why we didn’t built airports to no-wind areas at the first place?
In: Earth Science
Firstly your question may be an example of Sensationalism Bias.
That is, simply because a certain event is *dramatic*, may lead people to believe it’s much more likely, or believe it’s more significant than it actually is.
For example, people see videos about plane crashes and may choose to avoid flying and drive large distances instead, out of fear. Driving long hours is statistically far more dangerous, however. the videos you’ve seen are extreme cases since few people want to watch videos of normal landings in normal, modest weather conditions. Nothing exciting about that.
Secondly such places do not exist to the best of my knowledge. Weather and wind by it’s nature is unpredictable and cannot be controlled. I’m not really aware of any place where winds, weather, and storms have never been recorded. Even the planet mars has weather. Weather from solar storms is even a concern on the moon which lacks any atmosphere.
Thirdly airports tend to be build near major cities without much regard for the local weather. This is because people don’t find it convenient to drive all day to then catch a plane. So, as long as the weather isn’t windy the majority of the time the airfield can still be used. You need to simply build the runway in the average wind direction. As the saying goes, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
In such wind conditions flight crew will, if at all possible, decide to detour to another field where the wind direction is more favorable. If wind exceeds certain limits the air traffic control (ATC), by regulations, will close the field and forbid landing to any aircraft except for declared emergencies.
They seem scary but pilots train heavily for such events even though they’re rare.
So the videos you see are borderline of what is considered safe under regulations. The aircraft involved may have been low on fuel so detouring wasn’t considered to give enough margin for error, or conditions at other fields may have been worse.
Usually only large airliners would be cleared to takeoff and land in such conditions, as their size, power, and high landing speed reduces the impact of crosswind or turbulence.
There is, however, one area on earth where wind presents a regular and serious obstacle to flight. Namely Antarctica.
Most areas near the coast of Antarctica are subject to regular severe and long lasting wind storms. These are known as Catabatic winds. They are driven by the fact that the land on the continent may be -30 or -40°C while the surrounding ocean is roasting hot by comparison at -2° to -3°C. This is a huge temperature difference that drives fierce winds.
These winds last for days and are severe enough that even landing upwind is risky due to turbulence from the ground not to mention zero visibility from blowing snow. Furthermore diverting to another airstrip may not be an option and you may be wiser to just turn back over the open ocean to south America whence you came.
So flying to Antarctica requires careful weather forecasting and as a general rule you want any aircraft with enough fuel for the round trip.
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