<<When I can see a CB ahead I am never going to ever fly into it. I will fly round it or do a 180. I don't really care as long as I am never inside that CB.
Part of the problem is that ATC can't see any of the weather. >>
And the pilots can't see any of the other aeroplanes, DFC! We all know our respective responsibilities - pilot responsible for his aeroplane; air traffic controller responsible for maybe 20 aeroplanes. But the BIG problem for pilots in bad weather, DFC, is that ATC - and ONLY ATC - can see all the traffic around you and in the approach sectors of a busy airfield a lot will be at the same FL/altitude. "Vertical" is best, but you can't stay vertical with 20 aeroplanes; there is not enough room. If you suddenly turn without warning do you not consider another aeroplane alongside that you might hit?? By the time ATC has seen your unannounced turn it maybe too late to do anything with the other traffic and the stress caused to the ATCO suddenly faced with an "airmiss" would be immense and might result in him totally losing control of the whole situation. During bad weather, controllers are working flat out because many aircraft are not doing "standard" things and require constant monitoring.
I never had a pilot do some of the things mentioned on here and I cannot ever recall refusing a "weather turn", but it might have happened. However, in many years of radar control in busy airspace I never ceased to be astounded at the varying attitude of pilots to storm cells. Some were plodding along happily whilst others were frantically asking to turn left and right "to avoid".
One incident involved a 747. Heathrow was on easterlies and there were a few CBs about but the majority of traffic was following the usual pattern and landing OK. Not long after leaving LAM the pilot of the 747 wanted to turn right about 40 degrees which, after phoning my TMA colleague handling that sector, I approved. When he was a few miles NW of Bovingdon he wanted to turn south (!)... but not 220, which would have put him back into the landing stream. No, he wanted south, straight through the downwind legs for 09L... He kept going, turning further left, necessitating phone calls to the Heathrow south Director, TMA (S) and Gatwick Director. After causing some scary moments with the traffic at OCK he eventually ended up over Gatwick before he would turn right back towards Woodley and he eventually descended for landing. Meanwhile many other aircraft had flown the approach from all 4 stacks, some with one or two small heading changes "to avoid", and landed OK. Question: WHY??? The chaos in the TMA caused by that one aeroplane was incredible.
On another occasion a small turboprop made a completely normal approach whilst large jets were weaving all over. If the weather was deemed too dangerous to fly through by pilots of heavy jets, how come a small aeroplane could whizz straight through? (I'm not a pilot so apologise if the answer should be obvious).
Heathrow with storm cells on the approach..... Most aircraft held off by flying radar circuits north and south of the ILS. However, the odd one made a normal approach - right through the alleged bad weather! I had the tower telephone to say "The landing xxx says to tell everyone it's no problem on the approach" whereupon several others made approaches and landed OK, presumably ignoring their weather radar.
Weather avoidance is painfully inconsistent between pilots and ATCOs received no specific "weather training" in my day. Are pilots either not trained properly in the use of weather radar or are they are basically left to their own devices to interpret what they see? E.g string of same company 757s all on the same heading at the same level at 210kts. One turns right, one turns left, the next plods on. As an ATCO I received no official training in bad weather problems but I always told trainees that the worst situations they were going to see would be those in bad weather. It can be very, very scary. Maybe things have changed now?
It's a tragedy that so few pilots visit ATC. We used to get some at Heathrow but in the 10 years I was at West Drayton I saw less than a handful. I showed an airline captain around Heathrow once and he sat in on radar in some bad weather. He came away a very, very shaken man. I know that pilots sometimes attend controllers "unusual occurrence" training but is enough attention paid to bad weather exercises? When I did them I was usually faced with an engine failure or something similarly straightforward, or something so scary I might see it once in a lifteime, yet never ever was there an exercise devoted to a TMA full of CBs, which happens many times each year.