A Requiem for Oakland
(continued) "Hmmmm .... Well, yes, the forecast is saying tornadoes in the Kansas City area," she started out saying. "Hold on, let me check a few things." A couple of minutes later, she came back on the line and said, "Well, you know, here's what I think. I've looked at how this system has been progressing ... " she then gave me a bunch of specifics, " ... and I don't think that forecast is going to be right. I think this system is going to move and stretch south. So if you head south to try to get around it, I think you're going to get stuck. But if you just head west this morning, I think you'll get to Kansas City just fine and be on the back side of that system tomorrow." There was a pause while I digested that information. "It's your call, of course," she said. "But I've been doing this a long time, and that's just how it looks to me."
I thanked her, hung up, and went to confer with my instructor friend, who got all his weather information off the internet. He argued that the forecast didn't support going west. I said I knew that, but the briefer had said ...
It was a tough call. That printed data on the internet sites looked so authoritative and rational. Against that, I had the gut call of a woman who was claiming to know better than the very precise numbers and predictions of gloom staring back at us in print. And if she was wrong, I might be flying headlong into a line of tornadoes.
In the end, I caved to my fears and the numbers. We headed south -- straight into a line of tornadoes, as the system proceeded to do exactly what the flight briefer in Louisville had predicted. If we'd followed her advice, by mid-afternoon we would have landed without incident or trouble in Kansas City -- on the west side of a stalled front that trapped us in Jackson MS for three days.
That's far from the only time I could have gained tremendously from heeding the wisdom of an experienced flight briefer ... or, conversely, did gain from the added knowledge and perspective they had to offer.
Unfortunately, the powers that be, and which control the flight service world, do not seem to share my priorities or opinion. In 1982, there were 331 Flight Service Stations in the continental United States. That's when pilots could call a small airport and get weather from briefers who could not only look at their charts, but also look out the window and see what was actually going on.
Between 1982 and 1991, the FAA closed the vast majority of those stations, reducing the number of active Flight Service Stations from 331 to 61. But there were still any number of airports where a pilot could still walk in and interact face-to-face with the FSS staff. I spent a wonderful and memorable afternoon at the Huron SD FSS back in 2001 while I waited for weather in Minnesota to improve, and left not only well informed, but cheered by a reminder of the caring, human community I was linked to, even in the sky.
The Huron station is now gone, along with many others. By the time Lockheed Martin took over management of the system, there were only 20 facilities left. That number is now 18 and, "due to the efficiencies of the technology and a decline in general aviation traffic," as Lockheed Martin's official statement on the topic puts it, that number is about to shrink to 13. Along with Oakland, Seattle and San Diego are also being closed, which means there will no longer be any Flight Service Stations located anywhere along the West Coast. While many of the briefers will be relocated, Lockheed is also reducing its FSS staff. So a number of those "old hand" briefers are likely to retire.
The first argument for consolidation goes that technology has gotten good enough that we don't need those briefers, or that local knowledge. We can look at our computer screens and see cloud patterns, satellite, infrared and radar imagery, and all the data that once only resided in National Weather Service or Flight Service Station terminals.
It is true that access to raw data has improved dramatically -- even in the cockpits of our airplanes, for those with the right equipment. Which is unquestionably a great thing, and which also means we are no longer solely dependent on flight briefers for that information, the way we once were -- although few of us have the integrated monitor and computer set-ups I saw at Oakland.
The second argument is that we can get the same information from briefers in Prescott AZ who are trained in the weather patterns of the Bay Area as we can from people who actually live here. But that's where I really beg to differ. No matter how much I may have read about a distant location, I will not know or understand its irrational quirks or weather patterns anywhere near as well as if I see those behaviors unfold in my daily life, month after month, and year after year.
Consolidation is undoubtedly more efficient. But the cost of that consolidation is a loss of local knowledge and wisdom available to pilots. And that wisdom, while hard to quantify in a cost-benefit analysis, is what has made the input of experienced flight service personnel so invaluable to pilots -- especially those flying VFR in small, light planes. And every briefer I've ever spoken to on the subject agrees with me on that point. They just can't do anything about it.
In aviation, as in society, we seem to be moving more and more toward a culture of self-sufficient insularity. Technology has already replaced humans in any number of areas, leading to a self-serve economy in everything from grocery-store checkouts and airline reservations to inflight weather. And sometimes, that can be handy -- either by saving us money, or saving us time. (And let me be clear: Real-time weather in the cockpit is one of the absolute greatest innovations aviation has seen.)
 All that technology can also allow us the temporary illusion of independent self-sufficiency. I say temporary and illusional because all it takes is a personal or natural disaster to remind us how truly fragile we are without the help of others. But even without disaster, there is also something lost in the illusion and culture of self-sufficiency. We lose a richness of tapestry and experience that comes with human contact; a feeling of being a tangible part of a community that works together to make sure all of its members are okay and find their way through the night without harm.
I can't do anything about the closing of Oakland, even though I feel its loss. But I hope John, and briefers like him, know that we'll miss their presence, and the local wisdom they conferred, as much as they'll miss having us drop by occasionally to figure the puzzle out together.
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