Points for Pilots

  From Dallas to Canadian, TX What do you make of the pilot's decision —  that's me  —  to fly the red segment to KCDS, the Childress, TX airport, then change direction and follow the green route to the refueling stop KHHF, the Hemphill County airport in Canadian, TX? Daring? The green segment cuts through a yellow/orange/red area produced by radar. It warns of significant levels of rain. Nearby yellow lightning bolts indicate that systems augmenting radar have detected lightning. Taken together, it means that significant thunderstorms are ahead. On top, all this is included in a large brown-shaded area for which a SIGMET (significant meteorological information) predicts major thunderstorms. Flying into that mess seems like folly, doesn't it? We include the picture here as part of a discussion how radar images and SIGMET predictions should guide a pilot's decisions. Let's start. With the advent of ADS-B and XM-Weather, pilots now have a lot of weather informatio...

   Salt Lake City Terminal Area Chart In summer 2024 we had hiked for several days in Teton National Park and were ready for the return flight from Rexburg, ID to Dallas. In earlier years the return route had taken us east across Wyoming, then southeasterly via Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma back to Dallas. Unfortunately, that route was blocked every afternoon by massive thunderstorms.  A safe and interesting alternate route emerged: We would go south across Utah, stop at the Canyonlands airport in Moab for fuel, then proceed southeasterly via Albuquerque, NM to Dallas. Starting from Rexburg, it seemed easiest to fly south across Salt Lake City at a low altitude. That thought evaporated when we looked at the Terminal Area Chart for Salt Lake City, see above.  Indeed: The Federal Aviation Administration has managed to overload that chart. A number of magenta boxes specify special rules, the class B airspace has been divided into numerous parts, various preferred route...