Unseen Challenges: How Commercial Airliners Adapt to Earthquakes

When earthquakes occur, they can have an impact on commercial airliners, but not because of the physical shaking of the ground. Instead, it is the atmospheric disturbances that are created by these events that can affect planes in flight. Earthquakes generate microscopic atmospheric waves that travel to the ionosphere, a dense layer of molecules and charged particles in the atmosphere. These waves can disrupt the atmosphere, but they do not pose a direct risk to aircraft in flight.

The seismic waves released during earthquakes include pressure waves (P waves) and shear waves (S waves). P waves can propagate through other media such as gases, and when they reach the atmosphere, they become infrasound waves with frequencies below the threshold of human hearing. However, these waves weaken as they move through the air and do not affect aircraft flying over earthquakes.

While there may be minimal physical effects on planes during an earthquake, safety and navigation issues can still arise due to infrastructure damage on the ground. For example, an earthquake-induced power outage at an air traffic control base can disrupt navigation equipment and communication capabilities. However, air traffic control facilities are equipped with emergency backup generators to address such situations and ensure that flights can operate safely even during seismic events.

Overall, while earthquakes may pose some challenges for commercial airliners in terms of potential disruptions in communication and navigation systems due to infrastructure damage on the ground, passengers flying during these events may not even be aware of the seismic activity occurring below as their aircraft’s systems are designed to withstand such events and continue operating safely.