How are NOAA's storm chaser planes able to fly through hurricane Irma and not go down? I'd think the propellers and/or the windows would take a serious beating. How are they designed to handle the intense wind and rain and keep the crew safe?

Nomenclature technicalities aside, I think /u/Slithtoves is asking whether or not aircraft lift is affected by flying with the wind, since I had equated a plane flying into wind as the same thing as wind flying into a stationary aircraft in something like a windtunnel.

It is true that wind direction plays a huge role in how an aircraft produces lift which is why aircraft land and take-off into the wind so that they may have a lower ground speed while producing lots of lift. You must fly faster than the windspeed relative to your aircraft if you are to produce lift conventionally. If a plane flew into the wind at a speed less than the wind's groundspeed, it would effectively be moving backwards relative to the air. It would stall.

However, in massive jetstreams (up to ~100 mph) and hurricanes (up to ~160 mph), the wind can actually serve to push the aircraft through the sky, increasing its groundspeed with lower thrust than would usually be necessary. So in this case the answer is yes, the aircraft could stall, but hurricane hunters will fly far faster than a speed that would cause stall if flying with a tailwind. 160 mph slow for any of the NOAA aircraft.

/r/askscience Thread Parent