2 no-go decisions in one day

[Keith Smith]

This morning, I was supposed to fly to Taunton, MA (KTAN) to demo to a customer. The destination weather was great, but ceilings back at home for the return flight would've been 1500ft with 3000ft freezing levels, with tops around 8-10k. This was a simple no-go.

Later in the day, a requirement surfaced to get myself down to Roanoke, VA for tomorrow, if at all possible. Destination winds were going to be 17 gusting 34 by 9am tomorrow. Being surrounded by mountains/hills, that was a recipe for an incredibly roughly ride so I called a no-go on that one, too.

Both of these were revenue-generating opportunities, one of the leading causes of get-there-itis for business aviation, I would think. Instead, I'll go to Roanoke on Thursday morning (the client is fine with it) and will have to reschedule Taunton for another time.

Sometimes, part of having the instrument rating is knowing when to stay on the ground! I've posted a number of flight experiences in the past, but I don't think I've posted any no-go's, so I thought I'd share.

[rgrazian]

Good call. Check out this article.

http://www.avweb.com/news/safety/pilot_ ... 175-1.html

[Keith Smith]

Wow, Rob...that's a chilling article. In fact, this is my THIRD no-go in recent times. The previous one was for the trip to Florida (a trip where not having the plane resulted in nearly 800 miles of driving around Florida). I had to make my go or no-go call several days before the trip. As it turned out, the bad weather that was forecast never came, and I could've made the flight after all, but by then it was too late, the airline ticket was purchased.

The one saving grace is that having clients in GA industry, they tend to be fairly forgiving of the weather and don't usually give me a hard time when I can't make a flight.

[Mark Hargrove]

Read the last line of your original post again -- I don't think you wanted the word 'not' in that first sentence

[Keith Smith]

Mark, yep, fixed, thx!

[Peter Grey]

Very good decision making Keith. I was flying around that area yesterday (GSO-IAD-GSP-IAD) in the CRJ and we had good icing, strong winds, and we did 1 approach in icing to near mins.