An incredible time-lapse video shows the moment a towering wall of thick dust engulfed Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on Monday evening, grounding flights and even damaging part of the roof of Terminal 4.
Phoenix is in the middle of its annual monsoon season, and with it comes the threat of severe thunderstorms and dust storms that meteorologists call a ‘haboob.’
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a ground stop at Phoenix Sky Harbor at around 5:30 pm on August 25 due to the thunderstorms, although remarkably, flights were allowed to start moving again at just gone 6 pm.
As airport workers took part in a big clean-up operation, around 104 flights were delayed, but just three flights had to be canceled, and one flight that was inbound to Phoenix at the time of the storm had to be diverted.
Despite the minor damage to Terminal 4, the airport escaped the storm relatively unscathed. Thousands of homes were left without power with City Hall describing the weather as “dirty.”
Phoenix Sky Harbor is a pretty challenging airport to operate during the searing heat of the summer months, although it doesn’t appear as if the dust storm caused any damage to all of the aircraft that were on the ground at the time it passed through.
Dust and sand can cause damage to aircraft engines, although this is more of a concern for airlines that are based in very dry and sandy environments – an issue that mainly impacts Persian Gulf airlines like Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, has been critical of the engines installed on Airbus A350 aircraft because they require even more maintenance than previously thought due to the wear and tear of the dusty operating environment in the Middle East.
The desert weather conditions may also have contributed to a strange paint defect on the Airbus A350, which caused large sections of paint to peel, bubble, and crack across the fuselage of some airplanes belonging to Qatar Airways.
The Doha-based carrier became so frustrated with the problem that it grounded dozens of planes and launched a multi-million-dollar legal action against Airbus in London’s High Court.
After years of legal wrangling, the two sides eventually reached a secret out-of-court settlement.
Both Emirates and Qatar Airways are due to take delivery of the new and yet-to-be-certified Boeing 777X in the next few years. As part of its certification campaign, the aircraft will be put through its paces in extreme operating conditions, including the freezing cold, as well as the dusty conditions of the Middle East (and Phoenix).
