Long-distance Route Planning in Bad Weather

Route portion Albuquerque, NM - Las Cruces, NM - Andrews, TX
A recent trip from Dallas to Albuquerque, NM, to visit my daughter Ingrid went well. The weather cooperated for the flight except for a modest headwind. 

 During the visit, we hiked the first two thirds--the easy part--of the Pino Trail in the Sandia Mountains. 
Start of Pino Trail, Albuquerque, NM. Photo courtesy Jeanette Bynum
Bushes were in bloom; a perfect day.
Banana Yucca
Creeping Mahonia
Fendlerbush
When we fly to Albuquerque, we typically visit friends Lynn and Philip near Deming on the return trip. But this time, the schedule was tight, and we had to get back to Dallas in a hurry.

 However, the weather was not cooperating. The direct route to Dallas was blocked by nasty IFR weather; see above screenshot. An alternate route via El Paso seemed possible, but how could we plan it with rapidly shifting fronts?

 To the rescue came a feature of the Garmin Pilot that previously we had used just for checking destination weather and never for route planning: Terminal Area Forecasts (TAF). Here is an example.
Terminal Area Forecast for Sheppard Air Force Base/Wichita Falls Municipal Airport
The TAF for the airport says that low IFR or just IFR can be expected up to about 14:30 Zulu, which is 9:30 am CDT. From then on, marginal VFR is forecast to prevail. Indeed according to the next portion of the TAF, not shown above, the weather is to become VFR around 11:00 am CDT. 

 To plan the route, we looked at all airports with TAFs. Unfortunately, the Garmin Pilot does not identify them unless you click on the weather icons. But we know that TAFs are produced for the major airports. So by focusing on them, we got the desired information.

 Next, we wrote down for each such airport when at least marginal VFR was expected. Finally, we picked a route where such weather would prevail at the airports near the route by the time we got there. 

 The selected route brought us from Albuquerque down to El Paso, TX, and from there to Dallas. For refueling, we stopped in Las Cruces, NM, just short of El Paso, and in Andrews, TX. Both airports have runways in all directions, which was important during a day with strong and shifting winds.

 The Garmin Pilot now offers everything needed for a legal briefing: TAFs, as described; NOTAMS for the airports; weather forecasts; active SIGMETs and AIRMETs; TFRs and their conditions; and predicted groundspeed for all altitudes. The last item proved to be very useful: For two legs of the trip, moderate headwinds at low altitudes switched to 30 kts tailwinds from 9,500 ft MSL and up. Once we had selected everything for the flight plan of a leg, we filed it with a single click. 

Enroute weather often is different, and sometimes very different, from predictions. But SIGMETs and AIRMETs are updated on the map as we proceed, the weather is always displayed for the entire route, and, most importantly, TAFs are conservative estimates. Thus, weather typically is at least as good as forecast by them. It was that way on our trip. 

 But even with properly selected altitudes, it turned out to be a long trip: We spent 7.5 hrs in the air to fly 685 nm, a testament that our plane is slow indeed. It was a long and tiring day, but also a safely executed trip under difficult weather conditions.

Have any questions or feedback about this post? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Safe VFR Flight Over the Top of Clouds

Image
Flight above clouds Our Zenith 601HDS plane, N314LB, is not equipped for flight under instrument flight rules (IFR). Nor do we have the appropriate rating for that kind of flight. Hence, we are restricted to visual flight rules (VFR). They demand that we cannot fly into clouds, let alone fly while embedded in clouds. Want to learn more about flying?    My book Lessons from Piloting for 45 Years  covers close shaves over more than four decades involving thunderstorms, mountain weather, faulty runways, equipment failures, and more. Learn key strategies for coping with these dangerous situations.  They include two tools called Sully's Rule and Forecast Evaluation. VFR Cloud Conditions Below 10,000 ft MSL, VFR flight must be at least 500 ft below clouds or 1,000 ft above clouds, and horizontally must be at least 2,000 ft away from clouds. Above 10,000 ft MSL, two of the conditions are stricter: The 500 ft condition for flight below clouds is increased ...
Read more

Tracing the Flight of the Beast in "The Dog Stars"

Image
View north from Rollins Pass, CO. "The Dog Stars" is a terrific sci-fi book by Peter Heller. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it tells the story of a survivor pilot who with his Cessna 182 Skylane, affectionately called the Beast, tries to make a difference. The author is himself a pilot and has made sure that all technical discussions are correct, down to the minutest detail such as pulling mixture control. Want to learn more about flying?    My book Lessons from Piloting for 45 Years  covers close shaves over more than four decades involving thunderstorms, mountain weather, faulty runways, equipment failures, and more. Learn key strategies for coping with these dangerous situations.  They include two tools called Sully's Rule and Forecast Evaluation. We are not giving anything away by saying that the story begins at the Erie airport (EIK), which is just a few miles NW of Denver, CO. You learn that on the first few pages of the book. We are also not sp...
Read more

Van Gogh and America’s First Patented Helicopter

Image
A huge easel holds a reproduction of van Gogh’s “ Three Sunflowers in a Vase,” painted by Cameron Cross in 1996. Huge easel with reproduction of van Gogh’s “Three Sunflowers in a Vase”    The 24 by 32 ft painting on the 80 ft tall steel easel, weighing 40,000 lbs, can be seen from Interstate 70 half a mile away. Near the easel and painting, the High Plains Museum displays a replica of America’s first patented helicopter, designed by William J. Purvis and Charles A. Wilson in 1909. It has two 7 hp gasoline engines driving two counter rotating blades. Replica of helicopter designed by Purvis and Williams in 1909 Where can you see all this? In Goodland, in the northwestern corner of Kansas. Why did we fly to Goodland? We will come to that in a moment. First, the stories of the painting and helicopter.   Cameron Cross originally intended to paint giant replicas of seven van Gogh sunflower paintings. Two paintings in Altona, Canada and Emerald, Australia have bee...
Read more