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Who wants a thread on Aeronautical Decision Making to start the day?
Even if you don’t it’s happening 1/
Even if you don’t it’s happening 1/
Yesterday I departed CRQ to head to PSP with a student. After about an hour of flight planning and weather discussion with the student we prepared for an IFR departure in which we expected to break out of the marine layer at 3-3,500 MSL. 2/
The weather conditions at my destination was VFR. There was nothing in the METAR that indicated any bad weather at my destination.
So we depart and climb up and are greeted with this. 3/
So we depart and climb up and are greeted with this. 3/
Everything in my flight planning and my students flight planning told us that it should be clear above the marine layer. The fires were north and way south of me, the day before it was hazy but still a solid VFR day. 4/
So this wasn’t what we expected. But was it flyable and could we have gotten to our destination? Yes I was IFR. I have every piece of technology available in the airplane you could ask for.
We turned around and returned to base. 5/
We turned around and returned to base. 5/
Not every flight goes to plan. But most flights stay in the general realm of what you expect if you properly plan. When it dosent go as planned your ADM is going to be what saves your life. 6/
So the conditions yesterday turned out to be rather unique. Coastal Eddy was forcing the marine layer inland and a smaller Santa Ana was blowing over the mountains and valleys. It forced the smoke over the marine layer making 0 visibility out of the clouds. 7/
It was not what I expected. We were flied for 9k direct JLI. We would have cleared the mountains. I have done this flight multiple times before. I have done it in poor weather before. But as you get deeper into flying your ADM changes and hopefully for the better 8/
I turned around because everything I had planned for turned out to be wrong. And just because my destination was good weather dosent mean it’s smart to keep going. I was so wrong as soon as we got to 3,000 what was ahead of me that I didn’t know about? 9/
There are so many factors. How was the smoke going to react over the mountains? How was the smoke going to effect us? We can’t use the air recirculation in flight, does that mean we are breathing in all this smoke while flying? 10/
If we have an emergency we are 0 visibility to the ground. Even with the CAPS system those conditions turn a CAPS pull into a prayer instead of an informed decision. Continuing the flight would have been stupid. 11/
There is nothing in this world that is so important that we had to continue that flight. As a flight instructor it is my obligation to make that decision to quickly to set that example for my student. That’s how you teach how a student to be PIC. 12/
Good flight training is teaching a student how to be pilot in command. A massive part of that is making hard decisions. If we had continued that flight I would of shown my student that regardless the weather the airplane would get us there. 13/
