Benefits of Aviation Weather Services: A Review of International Literature

Abstract

This paper presents a summary of the international literature published on the benefits of aviation weather services. Aviation operations are highly sensitive to weather conditions. Information on weather conditions helps meteorologists, pilots, navigators, airline companies and businesses to ensure safe flights and save money by reducing some of the stringent requirements related to carrying extra fuel loads. The development of constantly updated flight plans with respect to available weather information regarding changing wind and general weather conditions can enable aircraft to use fuel more efficiently and navigate their planes in safer environments that avoid turbulence and make air flights comfortable to the travelling public. The summary literature presented in this paper illustrates the importance of the work of meteorologists in the production of relevant information and data that are accessible to pilots and navigators. The pooling of meteorological information, data and other resources by member countries of the World Meteorological Organisation represents a classic case of international cooperation that has ensured relatively safe and comfortable air flights across the world since the era of international air travel in the 20th Century speeding up the process of the more historically-recent globalisation.