2.3 The Operating Environment and Aircraft Performance
There are many different environmental factors that affect an aircraft’s performance in the air, but the one that got my attention today was humidity. When going through this week’s module and reading the required reading I learned that humidity affects the plane a lot when it comes to flying. It mostly affects the engines performance by decreasing the air density. Water vapor is actually lighter than air with air having a molecular weight of 28.966 g/mol and water vapor only weighing 18.02 g/mol. Now because the air is less dense how do we combat this to make our planes fly the way we want them too? According to the FAA you should check your density altitude regularly before flying and when you notice high humidity or reduced air density you should increase take off density, reduce rate of climb, increase TAS on approach and landing, and increase landing roll distance. Now on the opposite end if there is no humidity or high air density your engine will be preforming m...