As Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve fast approach, it’s a good time to highlight for U.S. pilots how many of us may be under great pressure to accomplish our planned flights over the holidays. Friends and family are waiting, and we’ll miss the parties if we don’t get there on time. In my experience, pressure to complete a personal flight—whether self-imposed or heaped upon us by acquaintances—can be at its greatest during the holidays.
At least in North America, that also can be the dead of winter for many locations, and the personal airplanes many of us fly just aren’t equipped to cope. For example, and other than a warm pitot tube, they generally lack anti-ice equipment. They likely may not have the range or endurance to reliably avoid weather, or retreat to solid-gold alternates. For non-instrument-rated pilots, the challenges can be even grimmer: Low ceilings and visibilities can wreck carefully made schedules by forcing us to stay on the ground.
