IFR Weather Charts / Publications SC

IFR chart forecasts weather

How To Not Be THAT Guy…

So if the above picture doesn’t drive the point home well enough that checking forecast charts, runway conditions, and becoming familiar with all aspects of your flight on the preflight, and updating yourself in flight, then I don’t really know what will make that stand out to you.  I’m sure these pilots did check the forecast, and their dispatcher for the flight certainly did too, but nothing in those forecasts said anything about stoplights, street signs, and a bunch of police and fire equipment.  It’s up to you as a pilot to be able to interpret “snow, ice, etc.” as meaning: possible “police cars, firetrucks, streetlights, etc”.  In this LESSON we’ll show you several IFR weather Chart products and how to read and interpret them.  When it comes to painting a picture of the weather, the more information you have, the “higher resolution” picture you’ll get in your mind!

NTSB Case Study

Probable Cause:

The pilots’ failure to use available reverse thrust in a timely manner to safely slow or stop the airplane after landing, which resulted in a runway overrun. This failure occurred because the pilots’ first experience and lack of familiarity with the airplane’s autobrake system distracted them from thrust reverser usage during the challenging landing. Contributing to the accident were Southwest Airline’s 1) failure to provide its pilots with clear and consistent guidance and training regarding company policies and procedures related to arrival landing distance calculations; 2) programming and design of its onboard performance computer, which did not present inherent assumptions in the program critical to pilot decision 3) plan to implement new autobrake procedures without a familiarization period; and 4) failure to include a margin of safety in the arrival assessment to account for operational uncertainties.

Also contributing to the accident was the pilots’ failure to divert to another airport given reports that included poor braking action and a tailwind component greater than 5 knots with snow on the RWY.

Well it looks like you made it out of SKX!  Lucky they have a runway there that’s 8,603′ with those crazy high density altitudes they experience!  We’re on our way now to Tuba City (T03).  As we approach T03, there’s some special airspace to watch out for!  We’ll talk about that more soon though!