Things My Flight Instructor Never Told Me #105
HARD IFR
Experience is by far the best teacher. My partner says experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. When it comes to learning things aviation, I have found that it is always more comfortable to venture into the territory beyond your own personal experience, while in the company of someone who has been there and done that. This way, if things do go to hell in a hand basket you have the voice of experience to listen to. But if you fly long enough the day will come when you know a lesson is coming and you are going to have to go out and take it alone.
So it was for me on the morning of March 4th. Our charter company had a trip scheduled for some time that was in direct conflict with a training program we had scheduled for our new hire captains. Being the lowest time captain in our group it was decided that I would forgo the training program (which was for another aircraft that I had no intention of flying anyway) and fly this particular trip, so that the new hires could get qualified on the new aircraft.
That morning the weather map was a classic late winter picture. A cold front extending from over the Great Lakes into the Gulf of Mexico was dumping snow all over the Midwest. A warm front, created from the remnants of the last cold front, had backed up over the state of Florida moving north, attached to a low moving northeast up the cold front. Our trip was from our base in South Florida, up to Jacksonville, to pick up our client, then on to Teterboro, New Jersey for the night. The next morning we were to go on to Bradley International in Hartford, pick up three more passengers then return to Jacksonville, and on home to Palm Beach.
The northbound trip was a cinch, featuring clear skies and great visibilities not to mention a 25 kts tailwind going north ahead of the approaching cold front. Other than the usual crummy service from Philadelphia and New York approach, the leg went off without a hitch. Our client landed within five minutes of our projected ETA even with all the rerouting and the scenic guided tour of the eastern Pennsylvania / New Jersey border. After putting the plane to bed and catching some dinner, my copilot and I sat down to look at tomorrow.
The weather in the morning in the northeast would be fine. The front would not make its presence felt here until late afternoon, and we would be a thousand miles away by then. But as the warm front, now across northern Georgia, moved north, a trough emanating from the low over Louisiana began to move north and east. The same features that gave us those welcomed tailwinds would now create strong headwinds, and it was likely we would not be able to make the trip from Hartford to Jacksonville non-stop. But the die was cast. We were supposed to be professional pilots. The chief pilot didn’t want to hear about weather. The customer didn’t want to hear about weather, and I was quite sure the three passengers we were picking up in Hartford didn’t want to hear it either. Fortunately, my customer is a pilot and a close friend as well and does not suffer from “getthereitis” at all. So I always had the “wait till tomorrow” card to play if the weather exceeded my personal comfort level. Knowing this I went to bed early because one way or another tomorrow was going to be a long day.
Up at 5:00 a.m. I jumped on the computer to get the forecast. We had recently invested in a few new laptops and my partner loaded them up with all sorts of cool flight planning software. For those of you not using computer flight planning, you don’t know what you are missing. Not only does it have all the current airways, both high and low altitude, but the regular update package which comes on CD, has all the current procedures in it for route decisions. If you are not familiar with the area and how ATC works there, use the router feature and it gives you a route that on most days you will actually get. I’m sure most of the flight planning software does that but hey, in the middle of the busiest airspace in the country, to hear “cleared as filed” is nice.
Then it calls the weather for you. It will connect to DUAT or Dynacorp; it doesn’t care, just tell it which. It will overlay the weather graphics right onto your route map so you can see where the weather is and where it is forecast to be. It will even get the current TFRs. You can read it in plain English or if you insist, in code. But the feature that paid for itself on this trip was the “Wind Optimize” feature. Tell the computer what you want to do and it will tell you which altitude will give you best speed vs. best fuel burn. No matter how I sliced it, we were not making it non-stop without going right to our one-hour fuel reserve. That fact, coupled with the forecast for weather at the destination had me scrambling to re-file with a fuel stop at Salisbury, Maryland. The weather there was forecast to be VFR throughout the morning and I figured we would stop, fill up and get one more weather briefing before taking on the serious weather.
The first leg up to Hartford and the second down to Salisbury went off without a hitch. But it was apparent that the winds were definitely stronger than forecast and our ground speed confirmed that. At Salisbury we got on the phone with the briefer while the plane was being fueled. Airmets for turbulence at almost all altitudes, Sigmets for ice and low ceilings and visibilities along the route was what we heard and what we expected. Destination weather was still o.k. and forecast to be 1,500 and three on arrival. It was decision time. Upper level winds were not only stronger than forecast but the higher we went the less favorable the direction, until above FL 200, where they were right on the nose. The flip side to that was the higher we went the lower the temps, thus a lower chance of severe icing, plus better fuel burns. At 22,000 feet, we would arrive over the destination with more than two hours of fuel, and the weather got better further south of Jacksonville. We decided to go.
On the way to FL220 we were in the clear but a hundred miles down the road we were solid IMC and minus 22ºC. It stayed that way until we broke out on the approach nearly four hours later. All around us we heard airliners asking for higher or lower to get out of the ice. We didn’t see any ice until well south of Norfolk. Then we began accreting ice on and off until from about 100 miles north of Charlotte we were picking up ice fast enough so that I had to cycle the boots every few minutes. The turbulence was intermittent and never more than occasionally moderate. The big feature was the wind.
We were cleared direct to Craig Field from 100 miles north of Charlotte. The ground speed was down to 130 knots, a hundred knots right on the nose. The time to station on the GPS read 2:48. It stayed there for nearly an hour. At one point, my customer leaned into the cockpit and inquired if the damn thing was broken because it had the same time to station readout from an hour ago. I told him no, it worked fine; we were just going so fast that we were going back in time. He laughed and looked forlornly at the potty, which was covered with golf clubs from the other three passengers.
Approaching Savannah, the controllers advised us of convective sigmet Echo 21 for a line of thunderstorms from 30 west of Jacksonville, to Ft. Meyers, twenty miles wide moving northeast at twenty. The time to station display on the GPS read 1 hour. We were now in a horse race. I figured if it was 30 west, moving east at 20 mph, we had about an hour. I also knew we would pick up some time on the long descent from FL 220. If we didn’t get vectored half way to Disney World, we might make it. South of Savannah, Jacksonville was reporting better than 5,000 and five. The radar was showing a few small cells, which we could easily deviate around. We were told to expect the visual to runway 14 which was kinda in the direction we were going….ahhh the best laid plans….Coming through 8,000 feet we could see the coast through the undercast and the line of thunderstorms appearing on the edge of our airborne radar’s range. A last minute vector south and east of the field to put us in trail behind a Skyhawk was an unwelcome surprise. “What was a student and an instructor doing out on a day like this anyway,” I thought to myself. Either they wanted some actual, or they got caught out and were trying to get home. Either way, it sent us 15 miles out of our way. As we turned base to final the radar swept to the west revealing the imminent deluge lurking in the gloom just west of the field. As we taxied in, a lightning bolt struck a tower on the airport leaving a loud report for my passengers to contemplate. As they deplaned, the first large super-cooled water droplets began to fall on the ramp as I sought refuge under the tail. With the passengers safely in their rental car, I closed the cabin door and beat a path to the FBO. It poured for more than an hour.
My copilot and I sat in the crew lounge, ate our lunch and watched the weather on the five o’clock news. Our desire was to make it home to Palm Beach and sleep in our own beds. The weather would have the final say. An hour later, the first line had moved through and we had a window of opportunity to get out of Dodge and head south. Weather along the route was fine inland, nasty on the coast. It was dark by now so we filed and fired up. On departure the controller offered us vectors for weather without us having to ask. Jacksonville always has great service and tonight it was really appreciated. By now we had been up 13 hours, and flying more than eight. We were tired but the night air was smooth as glass the plane was running great and there was a real prospect of VFR on arrival. South of Orlando we broke out into severe clear and all of a sudden even the persistent headwind didn’t seem so bad. We touched down 12 hours to the minute from departure at Teterboro. On any “normal” day that was a six-hour deal. Today, thanks to a late winter coastal storm it was double that.
The moral of the story? My partner was right. Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. If I had been in a lesser aircraft and not a twin-engine turboprop with all of its high altitude and known ice capabilities we would not have gone. Our decision-making process was sound and based on aircraft as well as pilot capability. Having the “out” plan ready if the destination weather went to hell prior to arrival as well as the command authority to “just say no” in the first place all played a role in the flight planning. There is nothing that I can think of in my flight-training syllabus that could have prepared me for this decision train. Only experience and confidence in my equipment and my personal flight skills could have guided me in evaluating this particular go-no go decision. That is something my flight instructor never told me.
By Michael Leighton a 4,900+ N.A.F.I. certified Master CFIIMEI-ATP, as well as an A&P mechanic and former F.A.A. Accident Prevention Counselor. He operates an aircraft management, maintenance and crew services company located in South Florida. You can reach him via e-mail at av8tor0414@aol.com, or find him on the web at http://web.mac.com/mkleighton. To order the book please go to www.tmfintm.com.