Comments on: Alternate Reality

By: David Megginson

David Megginson — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 02:30:32 +0000

I agree entirely with Frank — cutting it tight with fuel never makes sense, but especially not in IMC. One point worth noting is that where Frank and I live, near the Great Lakes, IMC can sometimes be very localized. Once I was flying past (not into) Kingston, on the north short of Lake Ontario. I was in CAVU, which continued until halfway down runway 19 at the airport, after which it was solid fog and well below IFR minima. The fog bank slowly rolled down the runway back over the lake as I flew past. I’m sure that Frank has seen the same thing in his home base at Toronto Island (in fact, I once flew out of Toronto when the island was VFR, but downtown Toronto was IMC — the low clouds stopped precisely at the lake shore).

By: Frank Ch. Eigler

Frank Ch. Eigler — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 01:33:15 +0000

The legalities of choosing alternates are much less interesting than the practicalities.
If the weather is down, then you had better carry enough fuel to get to a practical backup airport. If your airplane can’t carry enough fuel/payload for that trip, it is unwise to attempt it, even if a legally satisfactory alternate is available, and much less if the nearest real alternate is 200 nm away. I would not want to be in a smallest bugsmasher more than 200 nm from the nearest several airports anyhow.

On the other hand, if the weather is so good that arrival at your destination is not at risk, then it’s probably easy VFR in the whole area. In this case, any old nearby airport can be a legal IFR alternate, and you don’t have to worry about much extra fuel.

Or you could file a composite IFR/VFR flight plan to some intermediate point where an IFR alternate is still nearby (for legality). Once there, lose IFR and reserve requirements for the remainder of the trip and go the scenic route.

Still, such nickel & diming with fuel reserves is uncomfortable. (That’s why I fly an airplane with 6-hour legs with a big payload.)

By: Quoderat » Wikipedia URLs as blog subject codes

Quoderat » Wikipedia URLs as blog subject codes — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

[...] as blog subject codes Filed under: blogging — david @ 9:03 am Over in my aviation weblog, I find myself more and more linking to Wikipedia whenever I’m discussing a concept, [...]