Robert Goyer was on a flight back from Syracuse when the controller called him. "Let me tell you about your situation," the controller offered. But Robert already had a pretty good idea. He'd been "looking ahead" and knew there were weather doings on his trip back to White Plains' Westchester County Airport. He'd been in touch with Flight Watch (122.0) and been advised that things were closing down. The controller told him that everything south of Albany was well below minimums and if he needed to get to VFR conditions, he'd have to go as far west as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Robert elected to cut short his trip. He flew the ILS approach at Albany, left the airplane there, rented a car and drove home. I was impressed that his discretion outweighed any concern about valor or misguided machismo.
The decision not to complete a flight as planned is never an easy one to make. And, if accident statistics are any indication, the decisions to press on, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's not prudent, have resulted in bad endings to good people.
How often do we read accident reports in which a pilot, at the controls of a perfectly functioning airplane, has, with dwindling fuel reserves, elected to continue on? Invariably they overfly open and inviting airports to end up landing in a field just short of their destination airport.
Or even more frequently we hear about a pilot who descended below minimums during an approach and ended up plowing a furrow along the extended centerline. And typically the duck under doesn't happen on the first approach or even the second but on the third or fourth try. What do they say? Insanity (or in this case a disregard for risk assessment) can be defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
And then there are the accounts of VFR-only pilots who "continued into meteorological conditions." We all had to learn to make a 180-degree turn with reference to the instruments during our primary training, so, at least in theory, every private pilot should be capable of turning back and getting out of the soup. Is it that they wait too long to admit they've gotten in over their heads? Do they believe the conditions are going to improve?
