Thunderstorm flying????

[rgnlwannabe]

I don't have very much thunderstorm experience to speak of, but what I did to get around them was this. I asked Center for a temporary frequency change, and then called flight watch on 122.0, and they were very helpful in telling me where the weather was, where it was moving, intensity, and even a good re-route to get around it. Since I don't have any radar oncoard, it was a tremendous help. Ofcourse, nothing is better then your eyes, and not flying throught it.

 

[LA Confidential]

"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime."
- Sign over Squadron Ops desk at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ.

 

[AV1ATRX]

It's TRIAL AND TERROR, not Trial and Error. I don't claim to know everything about weather, but what I know I learned through trial and terror flying checks.

I never flew through a storm intentionally, but I did when I was flying with another guy one day who was not a pleasant person to fly with. He had about 10k more hours than me, about half of which were in Vietnam. He was the craziest pilot I have ever shared a cockpit with. The controller told him it looked like a Level III, and this crazy dude said he'd fly through it and give him a PIREP on the other side. Sure enough, he did it. NEVER AGAIN. When I protested what he was doing, he told me I was a chicken and that I wasn't captain material. Whatever....

I was fired from that job for not flying in severe icing conditions and various other illegal situations. I look for that guy to bite it any day now, and I pray for his family and the family of his passengers. That will be the true tragedy.

Fly AROUND them. Or land until they pass, if you can. It breaks my heart when people die unnecessarily. Read the accident reports - they'll tell you about it.

 

[MetroSheriff]

It's TRIAL AND TERROR, not Trial and Error.

LOL. Good one AV1ATRX.

 

[TurboS7]

In all my flyiing which includes living and flying in the midwest for years, I can honestly say that I have never been in a TRW. I have flown around them zig-zaged right through a line but I have never experienced the kind of turbulence you guys are talking about. I have been all over the world and flown every kind of airplane, day, night, and everything in-between . I agree with Avbug, no one on this board has any business being there unless they are with NOAA or the equivalent. Good day guys.

 

[Boeingman]

I learned about TRW flying by reading everything I could get my hands on about the subject, practicing with every concept of radar usage and interpretation I came across until I felt comfortable with them, observing experienced captains make a lot of good decisions and a few bad ones, getting close to the weather (sometimes too close) and experiencing the kind of mind numbing, god awful, terrifying turbulence that the inside of a TRW can dish out. In short, years of practice, practice, practice.

I have been inside a thunderstorm twice in my 9000 hours of flying. I wasn't a working pilot during either encounter and the second time I was in an A-300-600R jumpseat. That encounter was by far the worst experience of my aviation life. I thought we might actually pull something off the airplane before we got through it. It was violent beyond description. Who would've thought an airplane that can weigh 400,000 pounds would've been tossed like we were that night. Struck by lightning. Flew into hail. St. Elmo's fire like I have never seen before all over the windshields and posts. When we stumbled out of the other side of that thing and regained our composure, the FO attempted to exit the cockpit through the cockpit door. He couldn't. One of the male flight attendants had hit the door so hard during the turbulence that he actually knocked the door over the backstop and jammed it shut. We all had to exit the cockpit via the kickout panel at the bottom of the door.

Don't even ask how we got into that beast. We were in cloud over the ocean at night. Captain's radar control was off. FO's was pointed up at the moon, not down where it should've been. Lights on in the cockpit, eating and yacking. Totally avoidable IMO.

Experiences like that only serve to firm up your resolve to NEVER see the inside of a thunderstorm again. Anyone who would laugh about being inside a thunderstorm is either completely off his rocker or he hasn't really seen the inside of a big storm. They'll put the fear of god in you.

Interesting to see if this plane was the one that went down out of JFK? How long ago did this happen?

Another lesson here: I ALWAYS use the radar on at night.