Rod, since you're a pilot, maybe you know...
During a storm, the barometric pressure decreases, right?
And an airplane's altimeter uses that pressure to calculate altitude, right?
So as barometric pressure drops, an altimeter would read higher elevations. true?
Now if this plane was flying into a storm, could it have been that their altimeter was reporting a higher altitude than actual?
Altimeters are provided with a barosetting that allows the pilot to compensate for these weather changes, the sea-level air pressure to which the altimeter is adjusted appearing in a window of the dial. Flights below 18,000 ft (5486 m) must constantly contact the nearest traffic center to keep the altimeters so updated. Flights above 18,000 ft and over international waters utilize a constant altimeter setting of 29.92 in. Hg, or 1013.2 millibars (101.32 kilopascals) so that all high-flying aircraft have the same reference and will be interrelated, providing an extra margin of safety.
