✈Aviation

a typhoon reaching the Tokyo area on a holiday Monday, a hail day over the central Plains, and a rain axis crossing the north-eastern hubs

Three separate reasons to buffer a bank, and only one of them is the storm everybody is watching. The Kanto arrival on Monday lands on a Silver Week return day, so the decision is whether to thin the Haneda and Narita banks Sunday evening rather than cancel into a full airport Monday morning — the storm is ordinary, the passenger load is not. Over the central Plains the upgraded Slight risk with large hail as the primary mode is a ramp and airframe problem before it is a delay problem: hail is the hazard that damages aircraft on the ground. Across the Midwest into the North-east the weekend rain axis moves onto the busiest hub geography in the country Sunday, which is a flow-management call made the night before. And the 108 °F heat index across the South-Central is a ground-crew limit and a density-altitude note on short runways. Who owns the call: a network operations centre choosing which banks to protect, a day ahead.

carried on 42 of the last 65 editions — since Jul 5, the 10 most recent shown.