Windshear is the rapid shift of high velocity wind direction. Not only can wind shear vertically but also horizontally from a tail wind to a head wind. The most dramatic windshear is ususally associated with microbursts which are found in the vicinity of thunderstorms. But windshear is also found well clear any weather.
One of the first encounters I had with windshear was with a frontal passage over the field. It wasn’t your traditional verticle shear but a horizontal one as the gusting quartering headwind turned into a gusting quartering tailwind in the last 1000′ of an approach. The winds were something like 30 knots gusting to 45 knots and we were already pushing our crosswind component limitation. In the interest of safety we decided to shelve the egos and go around.
That lead to another interesting aviation occurance. The conditions were just as poor for those aircraft preceeding us on the approach (according to their PIREPs) but as soon a we called the missed approach the following 6 airplanes denied their clearances. It only takes 1 pilot who’s willing to bypass a clearance or abort a landing/takeoff in the interest of safety and then everyone else will follow suit. It’s common to think that if the previous guy made it that I can make it too. In deteriorating conditions it’s only a matter of time before someone dings an airplane.
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