Decisions, Decisions

[BEXIL160]

As I look out the window it's now CAVOK and a lovely flying day. It was not so a few hours ago.....

The story.....

I fly from an airfield on the South Coast in a PA28 owned and operated by a very busy group. Getting the aeroplane can sometimes be a little awkward due to demand, but people are generally very flexible and you can often get a few hours when it seemed none were available.

Anyway, I've been planning a little trip down to Plymouth for a while now and have been waiting for a combination of aeroplane, weather and me, all to be available at the same time. Yesterday the forecast for today was good, the aeroplane was "mine" for the hours required, and I wasn't working. Hooray!

Woke up this am to thick fog. Can even hear the foghorns on the nearby ships. Never mind, all forecast to clear later, so trip still on. Before going to airfield check weather properly on Met office website. Not so good. Destination (EGHD) ok, everywhere in between still foggy, but clearing slowing. TAFs all look promising. Area forecast good.

Go to airfield. Book out. Check aeroplane paperwork. Get Aeroplane out of hangar. Look up. Still misty, but improving (slowly). Listen to volmet. Weather still not brilliant, but up to 7km in haze at some places on-route. Do "A" check, aeroplane is "S".

Check bowser. Refuel aeroplane. All done by yours truly, just short of full tanks each side. Do paperwork for bowser. Ring desination (again). Weather is okay, but local mist patches. Ring en-route a/f. Weather not good (2000m in Haze) but clearing. Other en-route a/fs giving 7km now. Local weather still hazy. Not brilliant, but okay if I was just going for a local area flight.

Decision time? To go or not to go? What would you do?


Here's what I actually did.....

Decision. To go... BUT...if at anytime vis looks too poor, or landmarks not visible when I think they should be, Terminate flight and return to start airfield.

Get airborne (finally) and set course. Vis is poor. Still I can see my required landmarks, but they are disappearing rapidly soon after I have passed them (little turns to check). Can see well enough (for now) to navigate, but I am VFR and seeing other traffic would be very difficult.

Climb a little. Nope, no better. Decide that I am going to xxxx reporting point and decide. Get to xxxx after 20 min. No improvement. Do one orbit. Remind myself of my decision. Little nagging voice says "you'll look a right prat when you get back, cancelling a trip in good weather" (or so it appears from the ground). LOUDER voice says "STICK TO YOUR DECISION", don't care if you look a PRAT, make a Safe decision.

Roll out of orbit and fly back to home a/f. Vis still poor, but I actually feel much better as the decision looks like a good one. IS a Good one. Locate home a/f. Good job I know where it is and all the local landmarks. It is very hazy here. Land (not too shabby), park aeroplane. Open door and sit quietly contemplating "what might have been".

So..... thats what I did. A few hours later I am now looking at a beautiful day, and most of the haze has gone. The thing is, this has happened to me before. Trips cancelled due weather. Brain starting to think other club members think I am a bit of a "nanny" (i prefer the word cautious), or am I being paranoid?

Ever been in situations like this? Advice, comments welcome.

Besr rgds BEX

[IO540]

You can't land in fog etc but the short answer is to get the IMC Rating, access to a suitable plane, and keep yourself current.

[Evo]

I've had a couple, I guess most people have. Thought i'd give it a go on my first solo landaway and made it to Shoreham minutes before a bl**dy great thunderstorm that kept me there for the next five hours. Hmm. More recently turned around en-route to the recent fly-in at Compton, everybody else made it :rolleyes: but at Stoney Cross it was raining, viz was around 8k and dropping, cloud was coming down so diverted to Bembridge and had lunch under a beautiful blue sky. Oh well.

As I get more hours (and an IMC) the limits will drop down, but sod what anybody else thinks, if i'm not happy i'm turning around.

[FlyingForFun]

Better to be on the ground wishing you were up there, than up there wishing you were on the ground.

And another piece of wisdom - as soon as you have that first sip of beer, the weather will clear! So, having landed safely and aborted your flight, best thing to do is have a cup of tea, then another one, and another. Don't cover the aeroplane up, and definitely don't have that beer, and there's a chance it might clear up in time.

FFF
----------

[Northern Highflyer]

A notice pinned up in our flight office reads

"If there's doubt. There's no doubt !!"

Wise words I think.

[Evo]

And another piece of wisdom - as soon as you have that first sip of beer, the weather will clear!


You can use it to your advantage sometimes. I was at Goodwood yesterday with Speedbird252, weather was great and there was a Robin available ... had to have a tactical pint to stop me going and borrowing it for an hour :)

that's my excuse anyway ;)

BEX, just to make things worse i'm off to your airfield to go flying... :O

[FWA NATCA]

BEX,

I wish we had more VFR and IFR pilots that exhibited your use of common sense when it comes to flying during marginal or IFR minimum weather conditions.

I don't care if the weather improved later, you made a good decision based upon your current flight conditions, your pilot abilities, and your comfort level, and forcasted weather, I say you did the right thing.

As a controller I often get to deal with the pilot who decides to run the scud and gets into trouble.

Here is a good example of why I applaud your decision.

Recently a local pilot here at FWA who owned a BE35 and was IFR rated crashed near FWA. The weather was barely above minimums, he missed at SMD (which is where his car was parked), missed on the ILS at FWA, declared that he was in trouble and needed to land right away, and then crashed (cause unknown) a few miles short of the airport. He lost his wife, daughter, and one son, and he received burns over 25% of his body.

Could this be a case where the weather at his departure airport was VFR, and IFR at his destination but forcasted to improve, so he decided to go ahead and make the flight? Could he had waited a few hours, or another day for the weather to actually improve (the weather cleared the next day)? Could he had diverted to another airport that was reporting better conditions?
These are questions that he will probably be asking himself for the rest of his life.

So if anyone pokes fun at you for turning around and landing, or diverting to someplace reporting better weather, then I say XXXX XX (you can fill in the X's), because you can always fly another day, but you can't replace your family!

As controllers, at the end of the day we get to go home, sit back and watch a football game, but you the pilot, well, enough said.

Mike R
NATCA FWA

[bertiethebadger]

I haven't read today's aviation weather, but it sounds like coastal fog.

In that case, I would also of decided on a couple of inshore airfields as possible diversions. One a cheap friendly little field & the other a bigger field with nav aids in case the little field is hard to find.

[BEXIL160]

Thanks all....

I have had SEVERAL cups of tea now, and reflected about the whole thing and am actually PLEASED that I made a decision to abort the whole thing... even ended with a half decent landing as well:D

So, the weather's nice now. It wasn't when I was flying. No big deal, and there's always another day. Thanks for FWA's kind comments. His story is a sobering one (and as a fellow ATCO I've been on the other end of a few as well. I know you go home... but feel like **** after something like that happens ).

EVO enjoy your trip, just mind the gliders! See you tomorrow evening and no doubt we shall do a spot of hangar flying:D

Best rgds
BEX

[englishal]

Decisions....they're the hardest part of flying..... The flight FWA described was carried out by a very good friend of my wifes family, I don't know the full facts though I believe there was a fuel issue. Whether or not this was bad planning or not will come out in the investigation.

I had a fuel flow reading of zero on the climb out the other day under IFR. The plane was behaving perfectly fine, and I thought about continuing the flight. I decided that my life is worth too much to me to risk it so I told departure control I wanted to return. Felt a bit of a prat, the (very professional) controllers kept asking me if we needed assistance, we were given priority over everyone else even though we didn't declare an emergency or urgency...but I'm glad we landed. The fuel pump had to be replaced.

Part of what influenced my decision was a book called "The Killing Zone"...I suggest everyone reads it....You made a good decision.

EA

[Pianorak]

Just to say Thank You for this timely thread as I am doing more and more nav exercises.

Been to Blackbushe today, mainly to practice overhead joins. Actually they are coming along nicely now. :O

[DRJAD]

Also had a recent salutary experience.

Early mist, then low cloud (stratus) - it started to lift prior to rough departure time (planned flight with Mrs DRJAD and two relatives to Caernarfon). Decided, eventually, to set off and see what the weather was like away from the circuit. Almost immediately ran into cloud at around 1000', though the circuit itself had been clear. No particular problem, since it was probably localized, and the weather further afield was forecast to be improving.

Still, made the decision to abort the planned trip, return to the field, and wait. (We were about 7 miles from the field when I made that decision!) So, I felt a bit embarrassed, but comforted myself with having erred on the side of caution.

Later, decided to take a trip to the coast to salvage some sightseeing for my passengers out of the situation. Cloudbase near point of departure was now around 2000' with virga. Manageable with care, and coastal weather was visibly much better. When we got to the coast, it was superb, and much appreciated by the pax..

Later still, made a third (localish) flight as further compensation for missing the Caernarfon trip, and cloudbase had risen to SCT at around 3200', with around 8km visibility inland. (Still, pax. could see their dog in their farmyard when we flew over and orbited.)

All in all, disappointing in one way, but rewarding in several others: pax. were happy afterwards, and they will fly with me again!!

(Also, pleased that, following several hours of training for the IMC rating, my first instinct when running into a bank of cloud was to recheck the AI, ASI and Altimeter!)

[Whirlybird]

On the wall at Thruxton Airfield:

"Learning HOW to fly takes around 45 hours. Learning WHEN to fly takes a lifetime."

It's usually the low hours, inexperienced, and plain BAD pilots who will criticise. Anyone else knows just how difficult that kind of decision making can be, and will applaud you for making the safe decision, even when you didn't want to.

The pilot I know who agonises most over go/no-go decisions has over 2000 hours. This person once said to me that if I couldn't decide, imagine how I would feel telling the story to someone after an accident; would it sound like a sensible decision. I find it quite a useful test.

[Airbedane]

Good decision Bex!

You may be a cautious pilot, but you're certainly not a pratt. I would descibe your actions as showing excellent judgement and airmanship. To improve your flying you have to push yourself a litle further each time. BUT, the secret of sucess is to have a backup plan and use it, which you did to good efect. You've now increased your experience, which you can put to good use in similar circumstances in the future, and you didn't hurt yourself. You know your limitations and you've flown within them - this is a good survival tactic.

Stick two fingers up at anyone who criticise's your actions, or better still, send 'em to me and I'll do it for you!

A

PS: Have you considered puting in a CHIRP report on this one. There's a great flight safety and human factors mesage in there that deserves a bigger audience.

[IO540]

I would advise anyone with doubts about their own ability to not fly. That's the simple scenario.

However, there is the argument that when you've had your training (and not many people get a lot of change out of £10k by the time they've got a PPL and a few hours), you ought to use it. If you don't use it, you will eventually become more and more nervous and will stop flying. This is probably a large part of the reason why some 90%-95% of PPLs never make it to their first license renewal.

It is difficult to argue this line though in the face of the safety argument. It's a bit like debating speed limits. The higher they are, the more deaths there will be, and human life is priceless, so logically the speed limit should be zero. QED. Or perhaps 5mph, to be really generous. The aviation equivalent is flying only in perfect sunshine in a 500nm radius, and I've already said above what that leads to.

The big problem for a PPL in the UK is that if one takes every TAF literally, one would not fly for perhaps 3 months in each year. There isn't a lot that can be done about that, because unless one can fly on instruments, one's options are very limited. If I was a PPL only I would not fly anytime the TAF for the relevant areas has a cloudbase below the MSA... I do believe that PPL students are short-changed in not being told this sort of thing at the outset although commercially I can understand it.

But the converse applies: if the forecast cloudbase is OK, the METARs are fine, etc, and the plane has the range to make a decent weather diversion (say 2hrs reserve), then one should just get on with it. Bring an extra pilot along by all means - always a good idea for someone new.

But as I keep saying, of all the reasonably reachable things, nothing will do as much for one's ability to fly on a given day as an IMC Rating (with currency, and access to a decent plane).

[down&out]

Bexil,

I, and many others, know how you feel. I rent a/c and have done many years of taking passengers to interesting places. As Whirly says, decisions on whether to fly in marginal conditions are never easy, but I found I put two extra, unneeded, pressures on me.

1) Assumed my friends I take flying would be disappointed if I said the weather isn't up for it. True, but quickly found no one actually had a problem, as I always warned them in advance weather can be crap, or worse - can be forecast to be crap and then watch it turn lovely sitting on the ground:{

2) Assumed owners would be pissed if I was too cautious about Wx decisions. Well their skills are different to mine, they don't know the actual weather en route and they want the a/c back in one piece so it’s me that has to make the call.

I have found I can apply general rules on my personal minima to help in decision-making. These are based on forecast/ actual cloud base, vis etc; on my skills (& a/c kit) and distance I want to fly. I've discussed this with others and seen that most people have similar minima’s, tailored to their own skills. So now when I see someone take off in the clag, I don’t feel (so much) “oh maybe I should go”, more “I hope their OK”.

You did a good thing to turn back, well done!

PS. IO540, suggested getting an IMC is the answer to all your points. Well it doesn’t stop you having to make good decisions, but it will help if you feel more comfortable in “our” weather if you find actual =/= forecast.

[Chilli Monster]

Bex

Good decision well made. I flew down to the South Coast lunchtime and the vis was pretty poor so as another ATCO / Pilot I can only applaud your decision.

Without an IMC it would have been very tough going - as it was I was going into a big airport (albeit ILS unavailable) in a well equipped twin. The runway was still hard to see until you were almost on top of it. (Approach lights would have been a help - they might have been technically CAVOK but it wasn't what I would call CAVOK!).

You made the right choice - hopefully others will learn from your posting that there are times when you have to say no.

[scopeland]

undoubtably a safe and wise decision. more pilots could learn from your type of thinking.

The IMC would have been a help in this situation perhaps giving you more options. But at the end of the day making a good safe call means you live to fly another day.

It reminds me of a trip I went on earlier this year with a bunch of helicoptor pilots. We were due to fly to Amsterdam on the friday in March then Saturday to Bruge and Sunday home. On the friday the weather was mariginal but within my experiance and IMC rating and the heli boys were pushing to go (none of them were IR and there is no IMC for heli) so I said OK. I got as far as Stanstead who refused me a Radar Service and turned back. The heli boys went on in viz that was pure IMC at 600ft (take a look at the map for MSA). Fortunatly they all arrived safely in Hilversum that afternoon after crossing the channel dover-koksijde at 600ft apart from the guy who took his R44 through cloud (he and the A/C not rated for it!) and took photos to prove it!! (Very nice solid clouds shots in the sunshine!)

We sat it out at home and on the Saturday we had clear blue skys and nil wind so we flew over and joined them at Ostend. Result was a great night on the beer!

I don't regret at all turning back and sitting it out depsite the interesting names I was called by some of those who pushed on!!!

Don't be afraid of what others think of you, be safe!.

And before the heli boys (who I am NOT having a go at - you make your own decisons) have a go at me and say they can fly in less than fixed wing VFR viz as long as there speed is appropriate to the conditions forward viz at Stanstead was around 500m which without a RADAR service was unaccaptable to me.

[Fuji Abound]

PS. IO540, suggested getting an IMC is the answer to all your points. Well it doesn’t stop you having to make good decisions, but it will help if you feel more comfortable in “our” weather if you find actual =/= forecast.

Good decision.

I just wanted to reiterate the point that whilst an IMC would have helped on this occasion, whether IMC or IR good decisions still have to be made, they are just different! Neither IMC or IR is the complete panacea - only stay on the ground works.

[alphaalpha]

Bex:

First, your decision was safe and therefore good. In my opinion, it is good to push your minima and comfort levels a little bit when the right opportunities present themselves (but within your legal limits, obviously). This way your inceasing experience is of value to you. However, pushing your limits is only safe if you know when to turn back. You did. Well done.

Secondly, I agree with other posters that an IMC or IR rating does not change the difficulty of making good airmanship decisions. It only changes the weather conditions at which you make them.

Two potentially bad situations I got into, despite additional ratings, were:

With an IMC rating, late on an autumn afternoon, ending up flying over rapidly forming solid status and without knowing how low the cloud base was. It turned out to be about the same level as the MSA, so all was well. But, an early decision to divert would have been safer.

Secondly, with an IR, flying into icing conditions in an aircraft not cleared for this. I made the decision to divert eventually and all ended well. A better decision would have been to turn back as soon as icing was encountered.

Both incidents were 'I leaned about flying from that' episodes for me. So the ratings alone are not the answer.

Regards

AA.

[IO540]

I am sorry for my overly brief suggestion that an IMC Rating is the answer to everything; of course it is not. But being able to fly IFR and being able to do an IAP (at the destination, or at a planned diversion) makes a world of difference to the typical PPL fly/no fly decisions.

Because of the IAP option, ending up overhead some cloud should not be a problem provided that the forecast cloudbase is not anywhere near the IAP minima.

Icing is perhaps the biggest b****r in the winter but generally one knows the icing level pretty well and so if you really want to eliminate the risk, it should not be hard to do.

[BEXIL160]

Thanks to all who have replied, and to all who lurk as well. Perhaps we've all learned something, which is A Good Thing, and best of all, nobody got hurt.

As for the IMC. Yes, I'm starting it next month. My initial concern was that right now, as a pure VFR pilot, decisions are pretty straight forward, or as straight forward as I've described in this post. With an IMC rating the decision would still be there, but would be different or at least based on different criteria.

Competancy and currency were two words mentioned when I've talked about this to various flying instructors. What happens AFTER you get your IMC rating? Keeping my skills current will be the key I think.

Anyway, here's to becoming an old (if not bold) but safe aviator.

Best rgds
BEX

[IO540]

Yes, when you get the IMCR you will need to keep the instrument flying reasonably current.

This means sorting out access to a plane in which the essential bits work and work well. Even "trivia" like a DI which drifts 10 deg every 10 mins (pretty common) increases your workload drastically when in IMC.

Specifically you need a working radio, VOR, DME, ADF, OAT gauge, pitot heater and a load of other stuff. These instruments need to be actually checked to spec by an avionics outfit, not just tuned in to a local VOR and "if the bar moves as you turn the dial it is fine" which is what most schools do. Most of this kit is not needed for VFR (PPL) training, and if fitted it does not need to work well, or at all.

In reality just about everybody who flies IFR regularly uses a GPS as the primary nav device (by far the most reliable, most accurate and least prone to gross errors) while using the "old" kit as a constant check.

To really get the most out of the IMCR, you must be able to fly an ILS, procedural and radar vectored. This is the most important bit by far for both usefulness and (should everything turn to ****) for saving your life. So the plane needs to have that working too.

Unless you are lucky to have such planes available for hire at your field, this may mean getting into a syndicate which operates something reasonable. But you will not regret it, and will never look back.

I've met countless expired IMCR pilots and I don't think any of them had thought through this stuff before they did it.

[scopeland]

could not agree with IO540 more.

I spent around 10k on quality IFR kit in my aircraft to be able to fly on IFR. Dual FM Immune Nav Comms, ILS, ADF, DME, Garmin 340A Audio/Intercomm etc. I use it for every flight so that I am always comfortable and upto speed with there operation and indications.

On flying into airports with ILS for example I will always fly the ILS if available even in VFR. I also frequently book approaches at my local Instrument airfield just for the practice. Getting the IMC is a great thing to do and keeping it current should be fun not onerous!

GPS is an excellent tool and I use mine in conjunction with the Radio aids. My Garmin has the usual Jepp Database that I update very month. I fly all of my XC's using the GPS tracking radio aids. When in IMC you are getting multiple devices giving you the same information it is very comforting!!!

[down&out]

Let me put the case for low hours IMC as well. I have held the rating for 4-5 years, but due to limited flying I don't use it all the time, like those above. However I am still very pleased I have it. As I am not as current as others, I would not plan to do a flight down to anywhere near the legal minimas, or say a long flight in IMC, but if the weather turns out worse than forecast with poor vis and/or I had to climb/descend through a layer I know I can.

I think its a re-assuring backup, worth going for even if you don't own your on a/c.

PS its even worthwhile just for crossing the channel, as on many sunny VMC days the horizon often merges into the sea as you coast out.