AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - July 2017 - 20

FLYING LIFE

The retirement of a
Monday-morning quarterback

BY NATALIE BINGHAM HOOVER

Good pilots sometimes make bad decisions
WHEN YOU HEAR ABOUT TWO PILOTS who bust a
restricted area or temporary flight restriction, whom do
you picture? I see two novice private pilots, out for some
sightseeing. I imagine a haphazard preflight followed
by a launch into airspace that they don't really understand. This kind of thing doesn't happen to people who
are experienced, professional, and hold airline transport pilot certificates, right? Well, let me tell you a story.
Two high-time, corporate pilots are tasked with ferrying a Hawker Beechjet 400A on a 30-minute leg to
Hattiesburg Bobby L. Chain Municipal Airport (HBG)
in Mississippi, where they will pick up their passengers
and take them home. These two pilots do a preflight by
the books. They do a thorough walk-around, run the
performance numbers, and compute the weight and

This kind of thing doesn't happen to people who
are experienced, professional, and hold airline
transport pilot certificates, right?

NATALIE BINGHAM
HOOVER is an

airline transport
pilot, instructor, and
designated pilot
examiner.

20 | AOPA PILOT July 2017

balance. They discuss the weather and the possibility
of thunderstorms en route, as well as alternate plans
should they be unable to land at Hattiesburg. A-plus
work so far, right?
They depart on an IFR flight plan and head toward
Hattiesburg, where marginal VFR is forecast. As they
near the airport, they request vectors for the RNAV
(GPS) approach for Runway 13, as the ceiling is just
below 2,000 feet. All the while, they're keeping an eye on
the afternoon pop-up thunderstorms dotting the area.
When their onboard radar shows a thunderstorm moving onto the final approach course, they request a hold
until final is clear. After several minutes, they are ready
to turn inbound. Radar shows another cell approaching
the airport, but the pilots believe there's enough time to
get in safely. On short final, however, the cell moves over
the field and the pilots initiate a go-around.
Here's where things get hairy. The go-around process for a Beechjet requires several steps, including
adding climb power, bringing up the flight director's
command bars for a straight-ahead go-around attitude,
cleaning up flaps and gear, and reconfiguring the flight
management system for the missed approach procedure. Add to that scanning the radar for thunderstorm

avoidance and you have a high-workload situation.
During this process, the pilots realize they will be
unable to comply with the published westbound turn
the missed approach procedure calls for because the
thunderstorm sits squarely in their path, just to the west
of the field. As their groundspeed nears 200 knots, it
takes less than one minute for them to bust Restricted
Area 4401 that sits directly on runway heading, three
miles south of the airport. By the time they switch their
radios back from CTAF to approach, they are met with
an unhappy controller who wants them to exit his
restricted airspace immediately.
What happened to those pilots? One of them is writing this column. After asking the controller for some
time to sort out our next move, we ended up getting
vectors back around for the same approach and landing
without further incident. The thunderstorm was long
gone by then. We went inside the FBO and had a long,
productive debrief.
First, the stuff we did well: We were carrying plenty
of contingency fuel, which allowed us time for that hold
and go around. Also, we chose a go around rather than
punching through a thunderstorm-always a good decision. Finally, when dealing with a handful of airplane
while also trying to avoid the storm, we delayed calling
ATC. Aviate, navigate, then communicate.
Now, the areas with room for improvement:
Considering the high-workload situation brought on
by the marginal VFR, turbulent air, thunderstorms in
the vicinity, and the location of the restricted area, we
should have delayed the flight. Also, when we briefed
the approach, it would have been really helpful to discuss an alternate missed approach with the controller
beforehand, given the fact that the location of the storm
and the restricted area severely limited our options.
Aviating safely requires a Plan B and sometimes a Plan C.
Now when I hear stories about people doing something silly in an airplane, I avoid the temptation to
play Monday-morning quarterback. In the heat of battle, good pilots sometimes make bad decisions. We are
human, after all. But, we have to be transparent enough
to share our stories so that others can learn from our
mistakes. We also need to be able to ask ourselves the
hard questions: What could I have done differently? What
can I do to make sure this never happens again? AOPA

AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - July 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - July 2017