Safety Pilot: Wolves and crowdsourcing
Better pireps, better forecasts
Have you ever been told that VFR was not recommended, or that there was moderate turbulence ahead, or icing—and nothing bad happened? Ever expected to have an easy flight, and all of those things happened?
Weather is, without doubt, our biggest challenge. It’s responsible for canceled trips, missed appointments, airsickness, and vows by friends and spouses never to fly with us again. Misjudged, it can lead to wrecked aircraft—or worse. But there may be an opportunity to improve this significantly. One of the biggest advancements in cross-country flight is the ability to know the location of precipitation (a derivative of convection), and avoid it with in-cockpit weather.
The “cry wolf” aspect of overforecasting has been discussed in the past. New pilots typically are cautious with airmets and won’t fly because they believe the forecast—but the inclement weather may not be there, or to the extent warned. They learn that conditions frequently are flyable, and some start to ignore the warnings. A dossier of success is built up, perhaps over several years. Then the wolf really does show up and wishful thinking kicks in: I’ve seen this before; it will get better; they always overforecast; the wolf isn’t that big.
On average, we lose between a dozen and 20 aircraft a year to VFR into IMC—almost always with fatal results. Icing typically will claim another five or six. Innumerable flights are canceled when they don’t need to be. The lives are irreplaceable and the cost runs into the hundreds of millions—annually. The AOPA Air Safety Institute has several fatal accident case studies on its website in which pilots were surprised by weather that was known to air traffic control, but the pilots did not know—or made a bad choice.
The National Weather Service gets blasted when it misses a forecast, but all too often it can only rely on history and archaic models, because there is little feedback into the system. Imagine shooting an instrument approach with a crosswind but without lateral guidance. That’s essentially what the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) does when it forecasts airmets for IMC, icing, and turbulence. It’s a best guess given general conditions; and without feedback, there’s little opportunity for a midcourse correction.
The guidance for issuing airmets is broad. Unless amended, they will be in effect for six hours and cover no fewer than 3,000 square miles. Often, the forecast conditions will cover several states and the vertical extent is described broadly—often in 5,000-foot increments. The criteria include ceilings of less than 1,000 feet and/or visibility less than three miles, mountain obscuration, moderate turbulence, sustained surface winds of 30 knots or greater, moderate icing, and low-level wind shear within 2,000 feet of the surface. That’s vitally important if it’s really there, but if the conditions will even be in a small portion of the area for only a short time, the airmet must cover the entire area for the entire period unless amended. Not so good.
Pilot reports (pireps) help forecasters tremendously. Imagine actually observing the weather and making corrections as needed! But without airborne observations from us, these corrections can’t happen. Cost-effective automated sensors for aircraft flying below 10,000 feet agl don’t yet exist, so we need to say what we see. Most of us don’t, but you can volunteer one anytime. ATC is required to solicit pireps any time airmets are in the forecast, and controllers generally try to comply, but entering information is cumbersome. It is anything but standardized throughout the various ATC facilities, but technology may solve this.
Enter crowdsourcing. Suppose we could bypass ATC by downlinking off a tablet (electronic flight bag) directly into AWC and copy ATC. A few aircraft with internet access can do this now, but the big breakthrough may come if we can use the UAT datalink channel on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. Since the aircraft type, altitude, and location already are known, a pirep on any weather condition could be entered in seconds, with a few taps on your tablet. That has the potential to change pilots’ decision-making process—based on actual observations and reality.
If VFR were not recommended but pireps indicated safe conditions, many more flights could be completed. Conversely, if conditions deteriorated, pilots could know immediately. Airmets could be amended, issued, canceled, or expanded much more accurately than today’s system allows.
The NTSB will hold a public summit June 21 and 22. There’s plenty to discuss, and you can submit comments at [email protected] or join in person. Yogi Berra once noted that “You can observe a lot just by looking.” Key the mic for now, but stay tuned as we work to improve the safety and utility of light aircraft.
Web: www.airsafetyinstitute.org
Bruce Landsberg is the former president of the AOPA Foundation and is a senior safety advisor to the AOPA Air Safety Institute.
