Pilot Decision making Go/No Go Decisions.What2do

[scottfromiowa]

Weekend before last 10/21 I flew from CID to northern Wisconsin knowing weather had a 30% chance for rain on Sunday.  On Sunday weather was IFR overcast 500 so resolved to stay until Monday.  Weather was 500-2,000 overcast with IFR pockets along route.  Some VFR pilots were "finding a hole" per the briefer and getting on top.  CID was VFR.  I elected to hanger the plane for $20/night and drive 400 miles in my dated SUV (wondering if it would make it) all the way.  I returned on Thursday after a record barometric low pressure and 50mph winds (glad I hangered plane) went through the area Tues-Wednesday.  Hunted Thursday pm and Friday morning and had a nice flight back.  Did some maint. on SUV while at home.  How do other VFR pilots make their decision regarding weather.  I have no regrets as I did NOT feel comfortable trying to get up on top on a NON-VFR day...

[1964-M20E]

I had s similar event last week.  I was to fly form KNEW to KHPY for a business meeting about 257nm, 2 hours flying time.  Not knowing what the weather would be I had plan B to fly the corporate jet under the name of SW airlines.  When I woke up at 4am and checked the weather there were several surface observations reporting 700-900 foot ceilings.  Since I needed to have wheels up at 5am to make the 8am meeting I choose not to fly my plane.  It is not getting light around here until 6:45am.  The whole flight would pretty much be in the dark.  There is a route to fly over the marsh with those conditions but if I did it would only be during the day where I can see the clouds and the ground.  Years ago I flew a similar route in a 152 with low ceilings but I was younger and had super powers then.  I’m sure I could have made the return flight home in the daylight.  As it was SW was 2 hours late getting the corporate jet to Hobby.

 

My biggest factor in go no-go planning for weather is I look at the surface observations and weather radar.  This tells me if I can get there now.  Then I try to look into the future.

[skyking]

My decisions are all based on my comfort level.

If i dont feel comfy with the weather i dont go. You made the right choice Scott.

Even if you are IFR cert and the plane is certified for known ice. if you dont feel comfortable dont do it!

 

 

[roundout]

Quote: skyking

My decisions are all based on my comfort level.

If i dont feel comfy with the weather i dont go. You made the right choice Scott.

Even if you are IFR cert and the plane is certified for known ice. if you dont feel comfortable dont do it!

 

 

[RJBrown]

I flew from Denver to St George Utah around the first of October. The flight out Saturday was VFR all the way. We planned to fly back on a Monday by 4PM for work on Tuesday. 4pm was the latest I would leave as to be over the mountains in daylight. Rain and lightning washed out our activities that Monday. We had a 4 hour window to get out. Tops were about 18,000'-20,000' and all I needed was 100 miles east and I would be out of the weather. There were openings and the jets and commuter turbo props were getting out. With my old Rocket I would have felt comfortable climbing into the 20s and leaving. In the J I could not get over the weather. Not wanting to face embedded thunderstorms it was a no go. With the weather forecast to not get better for 48 hours  we left at 4 and I drove the 9 hours home. Returning those 9 hours on Friday. By Saturday morning the weather had pushed all the way past Denver. The flight home was beautiful. First snow of the year below me contrasted against the turning aspen.

[skyking]

roundout: I agree completely. I have almost every rating you can get, am ex-miltary and i still scrub a flight if i am not comfortable with it.

All the neat toys make some people feel invincible. "gee if the commuter turbo prop can make it so can i" is not always correct.

LIke i said even with over 6000 hours i still scrub if i dont feel comfy with the weather. Get- home -itis will never get to me.

[Jeff_S]

Guys, this is simple. When in doubt, don't. My primary CFI taught me this and it holds true in many situations. It seems that the more experience you get, and the more capable the airplane, the harder it is to stay true to this philosophy. This was borne out last week when an acquaintance and his wife were killed in their turbo Bonanza trying to come back from Mississippi to Atlanta at the bottom of that massive low pressure system. Their FlightAware track is pretty telling...it appears that trying to poke through some weather they got caught in an express elevator to heaven that tore up the plane. It landed in pieces in a wide area.

[scottfromiowa]

Sorry to hear that Jeff.  You beat me on your drive time Randy.  There has been significant discussion on the MAPA board regarding the missing Mooney out west.  I would love for there to be a happy ending (good Drama in Real Life story), but I fear the worst.  I have literally YELLED at my wife when she has tried to give input on go-no-go decisions for flying.  She now knows to "leave the decision to me".  I have ALWAYS chosen "Don't go" if I am uncomfortable.  I love to hear others decision-making process and believe "Get-there-itis" is often a factor.  Another excuse for me NOT to get my IFR ticket (just kidding).  On a lighter note a 2,500 hour balloon pilot landed on our Culde'sac last night.  When I asked her about the landing she said "I didn't want to go over the river as it was getting near dark"...(and her chase vehicles would have had a round about/hard time keeping up with her) and there was NO wind.  Damn that ballon looked beautiful out there with the burner firing as the sun was about to set....My lesson learned was by driving and "forfeiting my time" I got work done on the vehicle, I got some extra hunting in and I got a beautiful (un-worried) flight home.  It's ALL good in a MOONEY.

[jax88]

Along the same lines as "When in doubt, don't", if you have to give it a second thought, keep yourself planted on the ground.

[jlunseth]

This is a truly serious and troubling issue for me.  I don't find the "If in doubt, don't fly" rule to be very helpful, because I always have doubt.  There are two main reasons.  One is A&P's.  I have found the competence level among A&P's to be truly frightening.  There are unquestionably good ones.   I use Willmar as much as I can, they cost me money, but they don't let me down.  The money is alot less important to me than my life and that of my friends and family.  I have had other A&P's do work which has risked my airplane and my life, and I mean even simple work like an oil change. 

The other is weather.  I don't find the weather reports and forecasts that are available to us to be very illuminating.  If there is a clear and present danger at a particular airport, you can certainly get that from a METAR.  But there are a great many times when there is some weather, but the reports give pilots no real and accurate idea of how serious it is.  We have cumulus build ups all summer long in the midwest, most days they are benign, there simply is not enough energy in the system to cause a serious hazard to a decent pilot.  If you fly above the overcast layer you can see the dangerous cells a very long way off.   But the available weather reporting does not distinguish between the benign and the malignant.   I very often find myself feeling alot better about my handle on the weather when I am at altitude with my eyes and the sat. wx telling me what's ahead, than I do when making the decision on the ground, based on available reports. 

Icing forecasts are also very poor.  The available reports tell us that the conditions are there for icing, i.e. where the icing level is likely to be, and whether there is visible moisture.  But they are very inaccurate when it comes to predicting the occurrence of actual icing. 

I think I need to learn about skew-T's or something a little more informative than FSS and aviationweather.gov .  I want to know what is on my expected route of flight, and not whether my trip from Dalhart to Ada might possibly be impacted by the front that is over Calgary.

[scottfromiowa]

They found the Mooney wreckage...father and three sons lost.  Just makes me want to scream. NOOOOOO!  The wife and youngest child survive.  Keep them in your thoughts.

[skyking]

Scott: There were 6 people on board?????? on a Mooney?

I will of course keep them in my thoughts but am i missing something? how could there be 6 people on board?

[Earl]

Quote: scottfromiowa

They found the Mooney wreckage...father and three sons lost.  Just makes me want to scream. NOOOOOO!  The wife and youngest child survive.  Keep them in your thoughts.

[jlunseth]

No, there were not six aboard.  The wife and daughter survive the father and sons, but they were not on board.  They flew home commercial.

[GeorgePerry]

In 2009, 34000 americans died on US highways.  In that same year the U.S. had a popluation of 307,006,550.  The average american conservatively spends 100 hours per year in a car.  Those numbers equate to a vehicle based fatality rate of 9.02 deaths per 100,000 hours of driving.

In 2009 General Aviation aircraft flew 20,456,000 hours with 272 Fatalities.  That equates to a General Aviation aircraft fatality rate of 1.33 deaths per 100,000 hours of flying

 

So its facutally accurate to say you are 6 1/2 times more likely to die in a car than a General Aviatiion aircraft.  My personal experience backs this up since I have to drive on 20 miles of freeway to get to my local airport.  The most dangerous part of going somewhere in the the Mooney is getting to the hanger in the car .  The fear of death aside, a much more practical benefit of flying GA is not having to worry about speeding tickets.  I haven't seen any Virginia Highway Patrol Officers at 9500 feet.  Having a lead foot in a plane gets you there faster.

 

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table1.htm

[Jeff_S]

So, coupla' things.  First, the saying "when in doubt, don't" doesn't only apply to weather or not to take off (pun intended!). It's application is much broader than that, really. If you have a doubt about something, quit doubting and check it out. Not quite sure how much fuel you have? Visually inspect. Can't remember if you unhooked the ground cable after refueling? Climb back out and look, even if you're half-way through your pre-start check list. The point is, if you have a doubt about something then just do something to erase the doubt.

This does not mean, of course, that you can erase all uncertainty, especially as it relates to weather. But there the trick is to replace "uncertainty" with "risk." A business prof once taught me that "the role of the entrepreneur is to replace uncertainty with risk."  Casino gambling is like this, too. A bad gambler (me!) doesn't understand the tricks and is as likely to lose everything as win it. A good gambler knows the game, knows the odds in each situation, and by playing those odds correctly can increase them in his favor.

That's how I always envision the weather briefing. You're never going to get rid of all the uncertainty but with knowledge and experience you can determine the risk of any situation and then determine if you're willing to accept it.

And finally, to all those folks confused about the use of the term "survivor," I applaud you because this means you haven't yet started to read the Obits in your local newspaper with regularity!

[DaV8or]

Here's a good follow up question to this thread; how many here have actually launched, gone up to see how bad the weather is and then actually turned around and went back? I have, but it's usually pretty easy for me to do so because I fly alone and I usually don't have to be anywhere.

[Hank]

Quote: DaV8or

Here's a good follow up question to this thread; how many here have actually launched, gone up to see how bad the weather is and then actually turned around and went back? 

[jlunseth]

Usually, doing that means launching into IMC, and most of the time it is easier just to punch through the overcast and get to the top than to return and do an approach to get back on the ground, which is not without risk either.  Normally I don't go up just to see what's there, normally I go up knowing I can get on top and that the weather at my airport of intended landing is pretty good.  We went up once last summer "just to see" if we could get through an overcast just east of the Rockies.  We were about to turn back to Great Falls when we found a blue hole to the top and we were gone.  Uneventful after that.

I am reading Gardner's Advance Pilot book, I was sort of skimming through the section on weather last night, and saw a paragraph at the end that, paraphrased, basically said that many pilots think the best weather protection system is a turbo, because you can outfly most of the bad stuff and get up to a point where you can see and avoid what is left.  That pretty much describes what the turbo has done for me.

I don't like flying "in the soup" any more than is necessary, it is always bumpy in there. 

[DaV8or]

Quote: jlunseth

Normally I don't go up just to see what's there, normally I go up knowing I can get on top and that the weather at my airport of intended landing is pretty good.  We went up once last summer "just to see" if we could get through an overcast just east of the Rockies.  We were about to turn back to Great Falls when we found a blue hole to the top and we were gone.  Uneventful after that.

[jlunseth]

Boy.  That's the other post I have been wanting to write.  I just really am not happy with the weather reporting and forecasting that is available.  

Tops forecasts are not great, but usually a combination of the Area Forecast and a call to FSS will get you a pretty good forecast of tops.  I am talking about getting above the overcast layer though, not about getting over the tops of the big cumulus (which outrank all of us), nor about getting over the top of a moving front.  You are right that you can't always get over the tops of the overcast, but it can be done most of the time.  The typical summer tops in the midwest are somewhere between 8000 and 16000, and I can get up to FL210 or 220 without much trouble, a little more if really needed.  If the overcast tops are higher than 16 it is usually a front moving through with thunderstorms or significant precip., and I would have no business launching into that, among other things I am not FIKI and even in the summer that would be icing conditions.  If it is a front and if it blocks your route of flight you stay on the ground.  I slept on a mattress on the floor in Peoria once this summer because of such a front (it was night also, wasn't going to fly into that if I couldn't see ahead).  If you can skirt the edge, ATC is pretty accomodating about giving you a deviation to do it.  I have sat wx which allows me to see where that "edge" is quite a ways ahead, so I know if I am going to be able to get around it, or am going to run into even worse weather just trying.  I guess I have said it before, but it bears repeating, sat wx is a really useful and accurate tool for dealing with the weather over a long route of flight. 

If I can get above the overcast layer, then I can see the taller cells that need to be avoided at all costs, and normally it is not too difficult to deviate around them.  ATC will allow it. 

[jezzie]

Having pushed weather a few times I have come to the following conclusion.

" It is better to have turned back or not go as a result of a good decision than to have gotten through with luck"

[Jeff_S]

I resisted posting this because, well, it just seems like piling-on. But in the interest of education, I mentioned above about an acquaintance who lost his gamble with weather last week in Mississippi. The prelim NTSB report is below. It is a chilling illustration of the power that Mother Nature can display when pilots get to the wrong place at the wrong time. The plane was torn apart in the air, and the debris field stretched for 15 miles. One only wonders for how much of the return trip to earth they remained conscious.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20101026X35112&key=1