On Instruments

Solving the puzzle that is the weather

The sweetest sight in aviation.

I am sitting in the waiting area of a repair shop in Hyannis, Mass., while my plane sits in an attached hangar for what is supposed to be some routine maintenance. The waiting area has the feel of a slightly dusty and disheveled doctor’s office, with an old couch and a couple of lounge chairs. On a coffee table there’s a stack of old flying magazines and a parts catalogue.
       I flew down this morning from Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9) in a light rain with a fairly high overcast of 1,500 feet. My plan is to be on the way home before lunchtime, when the weather is supposed to worsen, with heavy rain, gusty winds and cloud ceilings dropping to a few hundred feet.

       But my hopes for a quick turnaround have evaporated. What was supposed to be a one- or two-hour job has now stretched to four hours, and I am now fixated on my Ipad, poring over the weather reports in the Boston area.

       The weather in Providence, to the south of Mansfield, has dropped to a 500-foot ceiling with 1½ mile visibility in steady rain and mist. Airports to the west and southwest along the Connecticut coastline are worse. Norwood, just to the north, is slightly better, with 1,000-foot ceiling and 3 mile visibility. But for how long? Should I be unable to get into Mansfield or my backup at Norwood, where do I go? I begin to look at bus schedules between Hyannis and Providence.

       When I was a student pilot, my weather instruction concentrated on the basics, mostly how to read weather maps and decipher coded reports and forecasts. Beyond that, the basic message to new pilots was: If there’s weather, avoid it. For new pilots flying under visual flight rules, flying through clouds, even wispy, harmless-looking clouds, was and is illegal.

       And there’s good reason for that. According to the results of a famous study published in 1993, the life expectancy of a VFR-only pilot flying into instrument meteorological conditions (clouds) is just 178 seconds. Accident reports are littered with the results of such encounters, and in fact the majority of weather-related fatalities are non-instrument rated pilots blundering into instrument conditions. 

178 seconds to live: In this case it was over in 2 minutes.

     For pilots, there’s a strong temptation to press on when conditions and logic warn against it. I remember a flight 26 years ago that convinced me to get my instrument rating. I had my license for just two years at the time and had accumulated barely 130 hours of flight time.
       It was April, and I decided to make one of those milk runs from my home field in western Massachusetts to an airfield in eastern Massachusetts to get lunch or pick up pilot supplies—not even a one-hour flight in a Cessna 172. A front was approaching from the west but was not expected to pass until nightfall, by which time I would already be back home and on my way to work as the night editor at a local newspaper.

       The flight that morning was in brilliant sunshine—perfect flying conditions. But by the time I got back to the plane for the flight home, blue skies had given way to a milky overcast. No worry. The clouds seemed high and the air was smooth. But as I made my way westward, it was clear the overcast was lowering. About 40 miles from home a veil of cloud and blowing snow dropped in front me. As the Massachusetts Turnpike began fading from view 3,000 feet below me, a part of my brain told me to continue onward. For a hesitating moment I told myself that this was just a snow shower, and that I could blow through it and into the clear in just a couple of seconds.

       The next moment I was making a 180-degree turn and descending toward Worcester Airport. I radioed the tower and got clearance to land. By the time I was walking into the terminal, a full-on snowstorm was raging. Between the morning and the time I took off to head home, the front had gained strength and moved much more quickly than anyone predicted.

       I ended up taking a three-hour cab ride home in blizzard conditions. When the weather cleared two days later, I had to hire two pilots to fly to Worcester to ferry the stranded plane back. By the time I tallied up the total cost in airplane rentals and pilots, I figured I could have flown first-class to London for the weekend.

       During my instrument training, instruction about the weather was more thorough than for my private license, with greater emphasis on knowing various phenomena—frontal systems, cloud structure, airframe icing, temperature inversions, the evolution of thunderstorms, etc.—but also the process applying this knowledge to specific flights, including coming up with a Plan B in case things don't go as planned and developing a set of personal minimums to accommodate my specific comfort and skill level. 

       I remember one instructor who at the end of a classroom review in preparation for the written exam asked: “How many types of clouds there are?”

       People started rattling off names: cirrus, stratus, cumulus, cumulonimbus, altostratus.

       No, he said. There are just two types of clouds: Good clouds and bad clouds. “You’re job is to learn how to differentiate between the two.”

        While having an instrument rating qualified me to fly in clouds and to navigate solely by reference to instruments, the ability to plan a flight and decide whether to fly into weather would be an ongoing process.

       In the 25 years since that spring snowstorm, with over 300 hours in actual instrument conditions and dozens of approaches down to minimums, my ability to gather and interpret weather information has expanded greatly, but my ability to put it all together and understand the weather seems to have expanded only incrementally.

       And so I sit, staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out what to do. The weather is a puzzle, and I can’t seem to solve it.

       Providence is now calling a 100 foot ceiling and visibility of around 3,000 feet. Airports to the south and west are almost all reporting low IFR conditions. Do I launch off into deteriorating conditions and risk having to divert to some airport 90 or 100 miles away from home or do I play it safe and take the bus?

      Finally, the work is done. After writing out a check, I take a last look at the weather reports and forecasts in order to make my decision. There’s no onfield report at Mansfield, but Norwood, my backup, seems to be holding. Things seem relatively stable, given how they have unfolded thus far,  but just to be sure I call the tower on the field.

       The Norwood controller tells me that while the rain and winds have picked up, the ceiling seems to be holding around 800 feet, and predicts that it should remain that way during the short, 25-minute flight from Cape Cod. With that as a backup, I start the engine, pick up my clearance, and launch into the gray New England afternoon.

       As expected, the flight is challenging. The rain pounds against the windscreen and airframe, making a noise that rivals that of the engine. Howling winds of nearly 80 miles per hour out of the south require the plane to crab at nearly 40 degrees to stay on the westerly course. Luckily, the turbulence is fairly light.

       On the approach course into Mansfield, my autopilot is useless. It struggles to stay on course, so I fly manually, bracketing my heading until I find exactly what I need to stay centered on the inbound course, all while using my throttle to gently lower the aircraft. At right about 700 feet, 100 feet above decision height, there it is: the runway. I think there is no sweeter sight in all of aviation.

       Norwood will have to wait.