Severe hail event on a 727

[Windy]

Found this on another forum -- the poster said he'd gotten it in his email. WOW!

This is an old B-727. Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2006 15:56:01 -0600

Last night around 2300 BAX aircraft flight 705BX encountered severe weather over Alberta Canada.The aircraft was cruising at 35,000 feet when it encountered tennis ball sized hail. The pictures below show some of the damage.All landing lights were destroyed, as was the radar.The crew was forced to make a "blind" emergency landing. Upon safe return to the ground the first officer and flight engineer quit. It is expected that the aircraft is a total loss as its structural integrity has been compromised. The ol' Boeing Tri-Motor made it through, though.

[Extremeweatherguy]

why does the date stamp on the pictures say 10/08/06? It is not october 8th yet.

That makes me wonder if these pictures are truly legit or if they are just another internet hoax.

If it is real though...then WOW! What a crazy ride that would be.

[Windy]

I take it you've never been out of the United States? Most countries in the world stamp their date as DD/MM/YY.

[P.K.]

They are dated the 10th August 2006. I'm not aware of anywhere else which uses the same date format as the USA.

[angelwing]

We use the same date system on base also (today is 19Sep06) Think that only in the civilian US is the date the way it is, on military bases it's not.

[Extremeweatherguy]

oh yeah, you guys are right. lol. Sorry about that.

I am amazed I didn't hear anything about this on the news during that time though. Seems like it would have been a big story.

[MetSul Weather Center]

Guys

A hailstorm severely damaged an Airbus earlier this year near São Paulo - Brazil. There are many photos of the event in the following link as well of another two hail and aviation incidents.

http://www.metsul.com/secoes/visualiza. ... _texto=379

[curtadams]

The internet report is exagerated, although it's based on a real event. Jeff Masters interviewed the crew in question and his report is here: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... amp=200611

Big exagerations:
Nobody quit.
Nobody knows how big the hail was.
The aircraft was not seriously damaged and was back in service in a few weeks.

That said, it must be terrifying to see a windshield in front of your face cracked by something moving circa 500 mph!

[Extremeweatherguy]

I found an interesting myth-busting page on this event:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/haildamage.asp

This goes along with curtadams post above in which jeff masters also cleared up many of the initial mix-ups.

[Aslkahuna]

Years ago, back in the 1970's, a C-141 got its radome beat up by large hail on descent into Clark AB in the Philippines-a week later another C141 crew told me that they didn't worry about our thunderstorms because they weren't bad!

Steve