Feel like I made a bad Go/No-Go call

Morne

Morne

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Morne
All,

I wussed out. I made a No-Go call and thus drove my normal BJJ-VJI route instead of flying the 182. This was for yesterday 4/11/13. Darn near fell asleep driving home but did manage to make it in one piece.

Details:

At 0400 EDT (0800Z) I made the call. There was the big line of storms off to the west and the TAFs left open the possibility that the storms would arrive at BJJ before my predicted 1900 EDT return home (2300Z). Additionally, the prior night's rain had soaked the ground and we were now experiencing fog with 1/4SM vis and VV100 at the home drone. That was forecasted to lift around my expected 0800 EDT departure time (1200Z) but I doubted that forecast. Of course, it is LEGAL to leave in 0/0 conditions, but I could never get my /A bird back into BJJ with the fog if I experienced any problem.

Tempting me was that probably 30 miles to the south the skies were perfectly clear, all the way to VJI.

Proving me right, the fog didn't burn off until much later in the morning, late enough that if I had waited for it then I wouldn't have made it in time for an appointment.

Making me kick myself was that as I drove home during the time of my predicted return flight I checked the radar and weather only to find the storm line had stalled 30 miles west (MFD) but leaving my home drone shiny VFR. I hated myself as I slogged through the next 5 hours of driving for my conservative decision. Ended up with 13 miserable hours of driving instead of 4 fun hours of flying.

I had an out if I got down there but the storms closed in fast behind me. I could stay into Friday to wait out the storm movement with plenty of babysitting help from in-laws and an understanding wife.

But it was the fog that got to me. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I feel like I should've just gone. Odds are I'd have been just fine and would be much better rested today.
 
"It's better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here."
 
Morne said:
All,

I wussed out. I made a No-Go call and thus drove my normal BJJ-VJI route instead of flying the 182. This was for yesterday 4/11/13. Darn near fell asleep driving home but did manage to make it in one piece.

Details:

At 0400 EDT (0800Z) I made the call. There was the big line of storms off to the west and the TAFs left open the possibility that the storms would arrive at BJJ before my predicted 1900 EDT return home (2300Z). Additionally, the prior night's rain had soaked the ground and we were now experiencing fog with 1/4SM vis and VV100 at the home drone. That was forecasted to lift around my expected 0800 EDT departure time (1200Z) but I doubted that forecast. Of course, it is LEGAL to leave in 0/0 conditions, but I could never get my /A bird back into BJJ with the fog if I experienced any problem.

Tempting me was that probably 30 miles to the south the skies were perfectly clear, all the way to VJI.

Proving me right, the fog didn't burn off until much later in the morning, late enough that if I had waited for it then I wouldn't have made it in time for an appointment.

Making me kick myself was that as I drove home during the time of my predicted return flight I checked the radar and weather only to find the storm line had stalled 30 miles west (MFD) but leaving my home drone shiny VFR. I hated myself as I slogged through the next 5 hours of driving for my conservative decision. Ended up with 13 miserable hours of driving instead of 4 fun hours of flying.

I had an out if I got down there but the storms closed in fast behind me. I could stay into Friday to wait out the storm movement with plenty of babysitting help from in-laws and an understanding wife.

But it was the fog that got to me. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I feel like I should've just gone. Odds are I'd have been just fine and would be much better rested today.
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You made the right call. If your not comfortable with the weather then don't go. Simple as that.
 
The only decisions worth examining in the rear view mirror are those where you don't believe you made the best call you could, given the circumstances and the information available to you at the time. If you used your best judgment, there is nothing to regret.

I have made many decisions where hindsight says choosing another alternative would have been better, but I regret few of them.
 
These threads are always inappropriate, unless you made a go decision you shouldn't have. Making a no-go is never wrong.
 
CJones said:
"It's better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here."
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This.

It's never wrong to stay on the ground.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Good decision making in my book. Always better to be second guessing a decision from the ground than from the air.
 
You did it right. If you had decided to fly, you may have been lucky and you would be congratulating yourself on how smart you are and what a good pilot you are. Then the next time the "GO" decision would be easier. Eventually, you will not be lucky and you might die. Wouldn't you prefer to drive in the rain for 10 hours today than to make your wife a widow and your kids fatherless some day in the future.
 
So, DID the fog lift? No - it didn't - so the rest of your analysis was academic. You would have driven anyway - end of story.

The issue is truly - what are you going to do about it? As in get an instrument rating. NOW you have a decision to make about that fog.

Did it lift gradually - or all of sudden? A gradual lift may give you the ability to get using Joe's Rule - which is never leave an airport you cannot get back into legally.

The thing about your trip back is with onboard weather you can see how close everything is getting - and land short - and wait it out.
 
You did the right thing. 0/0 may be legal sometimes (Did you check the Take-off minimums at BJJ?), but it's never very smart.
 
Morne said:
Odds are I'd have been just fine and would be much better rested today.
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Odds are you could have taken off in zero-zero and been just fine. Odds are the engine wouldn't have run rough right after take off.

Odds are you could have flown through the front and lived, even if it had advanced as forecast.

Doesn't mean you need to roll the dice every time.

You made the right call.
 
SkyHog said:
These threads are always inappropriate, unless you made a go decision you shouldn't have. Making a no-go is never wrong.
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Oh hell no, Nick. They are DEFINITELY appropriate to show good judgement, even though in the end, the opposite call could have been made.

Like you said, No-Go is almost NEVER a wrong choice.
 
comanchepilot said:
The issue is truly - what are you going to do about it? As in get an instrument rating. NOW you have a decision to make about that fog.
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I have an instrument rating. That's why I am beating myself up, because I know that I could have both legally and proficiently flown in that soup. But get back into my field of departure? No, and that convinced me to drive.

As to the hypothetical trip back not knowing where the storm line would end up, I have a strikefinder in the plane. And yes, landing short, or diverting to a field further away from the storm (CAK is 20 miles to the east) were viable options in my mind as well as just waiting it out down at VJI. I don't like flying into worsening weather, especially where thunderstorms play.
 
comanchepilot said:
The issue is truly - what are you going to do about it? As in get an instrument rating. NOW you have a decision to make about that fog.

.
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I believe the OP has an IR.

Either way, still the right decision. If he isn't comfortable with the weather the decision to not launch is always the right one.
 
I have departed into skies not legal for any available approaches... once. All worked out great (obviously), but as I did it, I regretted it. Won't again.

Express no regret at taking what was a sound safety choice.
 
Well, I have lots of IR hours as well - and used to be based at an airport that had 700' mins because of terrain surrounding it- after one near death experience with a partial engine failure in IMC I simply will not depart an airport in a piston airplane that I cannot get back into legally. Obviously when it comes to turbine airplane the insurance company controls that and its still going to require me to be able to take off and land legally - even under Part 91.

The storms where you were got to be pretty nasty but there was a gap and that gap was right where you were - it is easy to see that with hindsight!

I've flown into worsening weather and depending on the technology on board you make a judgment call. If you have lots of local weather knowledge and lots of on board information you can make the call alot closer than a guy in a steam gauge airplane with no XM, ADS-B or on board radar. It all depends what you have - with a storm scope, onboard weather [but not radar] I'm comfy to about 10nm or so with a constant speed of advance - I want to know that I can be buttoned up and inside BEFORE the winds hit the airfield . . . .

Its ALWAYS the safe choice to be able to write about it
 
CJones said:
"It's better to be down here wishing you were up there, than to be up there wishing you were down here."
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:yeahthat: My instructructor instilled that in me 35 years ago and it's still true today. Lived your scenario many times in those years but just reminded myself of the above and drove on.

His other bit of wisdom shared when I sought his advice while agonizing over a similar decision with conditions like yours right after getting my ticket: "Loren, days like today are why they make Buicks."

Stop second-guessing and celebrate a safe decision. Down the road you my fly more of them than you will now, but give yourself time to get to that point safely.
 
Here is an example of an asshat that made a bad go/no-go decision.

http://www.nwherald.com/2011/11/26/4-dead-in-small-plane-crash-near-crystal-lake/arhi7g7/

Staying on the ground is NEVER a bad decision.

Accident report from the news article:
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20111126X22009&key=1

Read this one to see how the bad decision can have real deadly consequences. They say an accident is a chain of events. Staying on the ground breaks the first link in that chain. The asshat in the report above had many chances to save himself and his kids. But instead kept making wrong decisions, killed three people and himself and it appears that his main motivation was to get to a football game the next day. Stupid!
 
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A go call can be a bad one.
A no-go call is never a bad one.
 
Unless the Hovitos Indians are closing in with spears and poison dart blowguns, there's no such thing as a bad no-go call.
 
scottd said:
I'm probably the only one who will tell you that *I* am concerned when a pilot makes a "bad" no-go decision. You heard all of the "typical" useless responses like, "a decision not to fly is always a good one." Okay, now that we got all of that small talk out of the way, you need to discover why you made a bad no-go call. Because you can't have your cake and eat it too...one day you'll make a decision to go, when you should have stayed. No, I can't guarantee that, but the same deficiency in knowledge of your bad no-go call can bite you when you *think* it's safe to fly.

It's healthy to second-guess...not to beat yourself up with regret, but to learn for the next trip.
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Now we're getting constructive.

Had I been wrong about the fog lifting it would've been an AWFUL no-go call. Since I was correct that an early spring sun in Ohio wouldn't burn off the fog from such heavy ground saturation quickly enough for my schedule, it wasn't really as awful a call as it could've been.

Ultimately it was the fog, and only the fog, preventing me from coming back into my home drone in event of emergency that stopped the show.

Now for the hypothetical trip back, not even the pro-forecasters were in agreement as to how far east the storms would come by 2300Z. That was why I had alternates in mind.
 
I have to make a trip across the state on Thursday. Commercial is out as I can drive the round trip faster between Horizon's schedules and the time it takes to drive. I've got a 172 reserved, but I'm about to cancel. My IFR currency ran out the end of last month, so the trip would have to be VFR. The weather forecasts are only getting worse. And I would be getting back home after nightfall. Night, marginal weather and VFR. Bad combination.

Don't feel bad about your no-go call. I'm making the same one.

Rats. 4+ hours flying (rt) vs 11+ hours driving. All in one day. To teach a 1 hour seminar at WSU. Oh well...
 
numl0ck said:
It's never wrong to stay on the ground.
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Unless you fly for a living. Eventually the boss will disagree.

scottd said:
I'm probably the only one who will tell you that *I* am concerned when a pilot makes a "bad" no-go decision. You heard all of the "typical" useless responses like, "a decision not to fly is always a good one." Okay, now that we got all of that small talk out of the way, you need to discover why you made a bad no-go call. Because you can't have your cake and eat it too...one day you'll make a decision to go, when you should have stayed. No, I can't guarantee that, but the same deficiency in knowledge of your bad no-go call can bite you when you *think* it's safe to fly.

It's healthy to second-guess...not to beat yourself up with regret, but to learn for the next trip.
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I'm with Scott. If we always made no-go decisions, we'd never fly. The question remains, did the OP made a good no-go decision with the information he had available at the time of the decision? Did the weather play out as predicted? Was the risk of missing an appointment too great to risk the uncertainty of the forecast?

After considering all of that, it sounds like the OP made an acceptable call at the time of the decision. This is a good opportunity to go back and look at why the forecast differed and what you might learn for next time.
 
Brad Z said:
Unless you fly for a living. Eventually the boss will disagree.
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I agree with you here. I assumed the OP was talking about personal flying, not commercial.

Commercial flying is a very different world and the go/no-go decision is usually hotly debated among pilots.
 
numl0ck said:
Commercial flying is a very different world and the go/no-go decision is usually hotly debated among pilots.
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A friend of mine used to fly checks. He once said "I don't know why we bother to check weather. It's not like we're going to cancel".
 
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