Sometimes You Have to Prove That You Have the Goods

I was reading the FAA Safety Briefing and it was talking about weather. From departure, enroute, and arrival weather to even diversion weather. There is a huge mark especially on GA pilots for flying into and around IMC when they should have just turned around. This can be abundantly clear sometimes, and sometimes even for freight drivers it’s hard to understand why the flight didn’t land safely.

I was recently flying home after getting out of my departure airport and lucky beat an extremely slow moving thunderstorm out of the area. In fact, one of my fellow freight pilots was flying into the same airport I just departed and that pilot did make it in eventually. What I would like to do is to paraphrase a little of how his flight went from the time that I was about to load my cargo and leave…

I had just departed, the skies gray and looming still and I was 20 miles out. I knew that there was going to be a hell of a time to get out of the area if my courier had not gotten my cargo to me in time before the storm hit the airport. The tops were easily into the flight levels (above 18,000 feet) and were more likely toping out above 30,000 feet. While not a bad storm, the slow moving would mean that I would have to wait, for a long time to finally get out, and it would drop a lot of rain.

After departing I got short vectors around the bad parts and was on my way to a nice safe landing back home. I also knew that my company airmen were on their way enroute to the airport I had just departed. I was able to reach them on one of the frequencies that we talk to each other on and started telling him what I had to do, or in this case ended up not doing, in order to get out. I let them know that the storm was extremely slow moving, and in fact the approach controller couldn’t see any major movement on their radar scopes. This is one of those moments when you wish that you had a crystal ball because if you could actually figure out when the storm was going to clobber the airport you could help every out when trying to get into the airport.

This surprised that pilot because all the controllers were asking him was if they were going to divert, and basically pleading the flight not to continue to the destination. I’ll be honest, I think the US has the best controllers in the world. I am partial through because I have never personally be the pilot in command of an aircraft outside of the continental United States. All the controllers were pushing and prodding him to divert to another airport along the way. I keep saying to continue. I keep saying that if you need to just make a 180 and turn around. If you are thinking about how to avoid something there are two ways in my book. First, don’t go. In our job that’s not always an option. If it’s legal for us to depart the company, and customer, expect us to get the heck out of dodge and at least attempt to make it a certain distance, even if we can only make it half way. Second, is that you understand your own limitations and instead of trying to for the issue you know when you have had enough and get out of that situation. There are times when you cannot, but those are usually far and few between.

So I finally convince the pilot to continue on and wouldn’t you know it, he got busy at times, but instead of having to shoot a difficult approach to an airport with a thunderstorm near by, he picked up the airport visually and was able to get into the airport before any of the bad weather arrived. It’s one of those things that we as pilots may face from time to time. ATC and other people will want to force you to do something that you may not want to do first, don’t let them. I cannot describe to you the joy I got from the pilot making it into the airport just because the flight didn’t let a controller convince them to do something they were not willing to do. People can scare you, people can talk a big game, but when push comes to shove you have to prove that you have the goods, or not.