Even With Better Tools, Pilots Make Same Mistakes

On February 3, 1959, a chartered Beechcraft Bonanza carrying rock ’n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed just after takeoff from Mason City Municipal Airport in eastern Iowa when the pilot became disorientated as the flight encountered a snowstorm. 

According to investigators, at the time of takeoff the ceiling was 3,000 feet and visibility 6 miles. But the weather deteriorated along the route, and this information was allegedly not made available to pilot Roger Peterson. 

The wreckage was found less than 6 miles from the airport.

It has been 61 years since the crash, known as “The Day the Music Died,” and there have been numerous advancements in weather technology such as NEXRAD and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), which helps weather forecasters visualize and analyze data from automated weather stations and satellites, and improvements in information technology such as ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot, yet weather related accidents still happen.

Simply Lacking Knowledge

According to a review of reports generated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), about 90 percent of the accidents it studied involve a weather component as a causal factor, with the continuation of visual flight into instrument conditions being the most common. Often this happens because the pilot doesn’t receive a full briefing for the route or doesn’t correctly interpret the forecast conditions.

“In an NTSB safety study, they concluded that once the pilot passes the oral and practical test, they have zero requirements to learn more about weather,” said Scott Dennstaedt, a CFI and former research meteorologist with the National Weather Service and a FLYING contributor.

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Pilots with a poor understanding of weather have been on Dennstaedt’s radar for the past 30 years—and his Ph.D dissertation was based on it.

“Pilots are erroneously told—by other pilots or their instructor—that they will just magically gain more weather knowledge as they gain flight experience,” Dennstaedt said.

Dennstaedt said this isn’t accurate, adding that the NTSB suggests pilots should be required on their flight review to do an extra hour of training that strictly focuses on weather.

“There are two issues with this,” he said. “One hour every two years isn’t enough, and second, you are asking flight instructors, who I believe are part of the problem, to make this all go away. It’s more about how pilots consume weather. Weather information isn’t very well integrated, and that’s where this all starts to fall apart.

“In fact, it’s not really the pilot’s issue. It’s how we (the collective pilot/aviation world) avoid packing that weather guidance in a way they can easily understand the risks. We throw a bunch of data at pilots and see what sticks. It’s like throwing a deck of cards at you and seeing how many you can catch. All of the various sites do this, including all of the heavyweight apps. Moreover, it’s also about identifying and quantifying risk which is rarely done by a pilot in any formal way.

“If I had to suggest one thing that pilots need to understand better, it’s the big weather picture. I make 95 percent of my weather decisions based on this big weather picture.”  

Doug Stolz, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service (NWS) aviation unit in Auburn, Washington, agrees that seeing the bigger weather picture is vital. 

In addition to more than a decade of experience studying and providing weather to aviation interests, Stolz is also a certified pilot and recalls that his private pilot check ride was discontinued twice because of weather.

According to Stolz, many pilots are taught to obtain and read a METAR and TAF, but they don’t understand how to put the information into context or fully understand how the weather makers in the vicinity—such as mountains and large bodies of water—can significantly influence the conditions.

In the Puget Sound, for example, the region is framed by mountains—the Cascades to the east and the Olympic range to the west. Air flowing up or down mountains can have a profound impact on the weather, and their topography—in particular canyons—can create microclimates.

“One of the things that we really take note of is just how quickly weather can radically change,” said Stolz. “Pilots are caught by surprise when they fly close to or attempt to fly over mountains and hills, as VFR into IMC weather changes fast.”

Pilots who attempt to scud run, thinking they can quickly traverse clouds, can be in for a rude awakening. 

“It can be hard to tell the coverage of a cloud layer if you accidentally fly into it,” said Stolz. “[The reason pilots continue VFR into IMC is because] the weather changes quickly, and you don’t know how those clouds are actually shaping up and how dense they are just from looking at it from the outside. I’ve talked to people at pilot meetings…and they’re just like, wow, it’s so surprising to me how fast that ice accumulated or how they were sinking down into a valley and they couldn’t climb out.

“Another aspect is how quickly the weather changes from one side of the Cascades to the other…Just because it’s nice on the west side doesn’t mean it’s nice on the east side, and vice versa.”

How Data Is Generated

Stolz spends his workday watching the weather. It begins at 5 a.m. preparing the preduty briefing for air traffic controllers (ATCs).

“The preduty briefing gives pilots and air traffic managers the weather information they need so that they can make decisions about how to run traffic flows around the airspace that we watch over that extends from Northern California up to British Columbia, offshore of Washington, Oregon, Northern California, all the way to Montana and Idaho,” he said. 

“We update the national aviation meteorologist team with our local forecast philosophy by 6 a.m.. We have quite a big watch area that we do, and then the rest of the day is mostly fine-tuning those briefings and answering questions and consultation with the FAA air traffic management group. 

“Our other duties include briefing any TAF updates, advising ATC on thunderstorm movements in the area, and issuing Center Weather Advisories as needed.”

In the early days of general aviation, information from smaller airports was often generated by a weather observer, many of them retired meteorologists from the U.S. military. That gave way to automated weather observation stations. The NWS also still launches specialized balloons, or radiosondes, twice per day to gather weather readings to supplement the automated process.

Sometimes these machines require maintenance. That’s when the dollar sign symbol appears at the end of a line of information on a TAF or METAR. Pilots are cautioned to be skeptical about the information the unit is providing and to look at the weather being reported at nearby stations to see if the dollar sign station report seems plausible.

“Pilots can use this information to develop a mental model of what is going on,” said Stolz. “The mental model helps them evaluate the risks with the understanding that weather is dynamic and risks can change. Generally, it’s good practice to have a mental picture of weather and constantly seek feedback from outside as you go. That’s just part of sound aeronautical decision making.”

Where to Begin

There are multiple apps available to receive weather information, but many pilots still use broadcast media as their first source. 

For many years Seattle residents spent their morning with M.J. McDermott, the morning meteorologist at KCPQ-TV from 2003-21. All meteorologists are tasked with taking the dynamic and sometimes complicated weather and making it user friendly.

McDermott received an atmospheric sciences degree from the University of Washington with the intent of becoming a TV meteorologist. 

“I chose the University of Washington because…[it] hosts a weather model called the MM5 that covers Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and parts of southern British Columbia,” McDermott said. 

“It is a [fifth-generation] mesoscale model for the upper left-hand corner of the country. It’s got a lot of layers to it that you don’t really need if you just do a basic forecast for a region. But I really trust it. It’s the secret sauce for forecasting around here [in the Pacific Northwest]. 

“It takes the giant global models in it….You can just see systems going through. You can check wind speeds, wind direction. You can check pressure and multiple layers in the atmosphere on this one brilliant model.”

McDermott said the main priority in television weather forecasting is communicating the information to the general public in a digestible fashion to keep people safe. 

Best Practices for Procurement

When it comes to weather, you can never have too much information. 

As a CFI I teach my student pilots to get at least three briefings, starting with viewing a broadcast or checking an app a day or so before the planned flight. Then obtain an outlook briefing from Leidos Flight Service when more than six hours away from estimated launch. 

Two hours out, get a standard briefing and crunch the performance numbers. Follow up with an abbreviated briefing an hour before launch just to be sure nothing has changed.

Is this overkill? For most certificated pilots, yes. However, using this technique provides a better understanding of how the local weather patterns move and evolve, and what they can expect. Every safe flight begins with a clear understanding of the weather.

This column first appeared in the May Issue 970 of the FLYING print edition.