Outside Air Temperature


Outside Air Temperature

Commercial airliners are completely climate-controlled and not affected by outside air temperatures. If there's a problem with the heating or air conditioning, the plane is grounded until it's fixed. That happened to us once when we were flying on a commercial airlines, leaving out of O'Hare International in Chicago. Thank goodness the air conditioning problem was resolved before take-off. Even with climate-control, I've still been overheated in a crowded airliner.

Outside air temperature is more of a concern in small, privately owned aircraft, where there is only a thin aluminum wall or an acrylic canopy between the passengers and the outside air. In the summertime, it's not usually a problem, but a boon. The higher you go, the cooler the outside air temperature.

In the winter, though, our airplane heater isn't able to heat the airplane sufficiently when the outside air temperature is 5 degrees, such as it was on the day I took the picture, below. After about an hour of flying, my gloved fingers were numb. I was glad we were heading home.

This picture was taken when we decided to fly over Palouse Falls in December and see it frozen. Click the link to see pictures.


Have you ever been overly heated, or chilled, in an airplane? What did you do?




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