How Can It Be Too Hot To Fly?

Back in June it was almost 50 degrees Celsius in Phoenix Arizona a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit like half of the way to boiling whatever way of imagining this you want to use this is way too hot I grew up in Florida and I draw the line at whether that's hot enough to help you cook a gator sausage on the sidewalk this heat wave had an unusual side effect one that made headlines because it's so foreign to those of us who don't live in places that are basically the surface of the Sun more than 40 flights were canceled because it was too hot to fly and it wasn't a problem with the planes themselves I wasn't too hot inside the air the atmosphere just wasn't dense enough for planes to fly safely the strength of the lift the force pushing a plane off the ground depends on how many air molecules are flowing past the wings the more molecules there are the more of a push the plane get so planes have big tilted wings to hit lots of molecules and they speed down the runway to ram through as many as possible if all goes well enough molecules are pushing past the wings at the end of the runway to get the plane up in the air which almost always happens but if there aren't enough molecules flowing past the wings the plane just won't lift off and that's no good besides the fact that you're not going to get anywhere you do not want planes like still on the ground when the runway in airports at higher altitudes where the air is thinner have longer runways so that planes can speed up more and catch enough molecules to get themselves in the air which is why mile-high Denver Colorado has some of the longest runway from the world but temperature also matters air molecules move faster at higher temperatures and slower at lower temperatures which kind of makes it seem like higher temperatures should help planes you would think that faster molecules would get you more lift but the molecules in a gas are also constantly bouncing off of each other the faster they move the further away they bounce after each collision and the more spread out they are so warmer air in the atmosphere is less dense than cooler air and the number of molecules moving past the wings matters more than the speed of those molecules wings speeding down a runway through nice cool dense air move through lots and lots of molecules so they get plenty of lift but when air is too hot the molecules are too spread out to lift the plane up by the time it's at the end of the runway also make plane's engines less efficient which makes it even harder to catch enough molecules in time airlines can lighten planes by removing passengers or baggage but that only works up to a point for safety some commercial airplanes aren't supposed to be flown at temperatures above about 50 degrees Celsius so that's one more reason that I'm glad that I do not live in a place like Phoenix if it gets too hot you just you like cannot escape by flying
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