An airplane approaching the runway at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport during a heat wave on July 15. Extreme heat makes flying airplanes much more difficult. — Getty Images/TNS
Airlines and pilots will often choose to delay flights or unload passengers and luggage to shed weight from planes when the temperature climbs too high. This leads to cascading schedule disruptions across the entire system, along with passengers occasionally being trapped for hours on runways inside roasting aircraft.
“This is a physical restriction related to air density, and there are not a whole lot of direct technological fixes for it,” said Syracuse University Asst Prof Ethan Coffel, who was an author of the 2017 study. Unfortunately for America’s mental health, LaGuardia is also what the US Federal Aviation Administration calls a “pacing airport”, or, as I see it, one that:> ruins air schedules around the country as a result.
Surprisingly, the hottest of those cities, Phoenix, suffers relatively few weight restriction days thanks to its longer-than-usual runways, which are also made of specially reinforced concrete. Of course, not every airport can afford the expense and delay of tearing up old runways and building new, stronger ones. And cancellations still happen, even in Phoenix.