Using En Route Alternates

摘要

It came out of a conversation with a local examiner about low-time pilots and a classic trap. The day is VFR, but there's a ceiling of 4000 feet along their route. Partway to the destination the clouds are down to 3000 and they are flying lower than planned. Almost at the destination, clouds are down to 2000 and they are scudding it at 1500. Light rain is falling, the sun is setting, a tower flashes by level with the airplane ... Reading the accident record on Monday morning, it's too easy to see the decision chain as the work of an idiot. (OK, sometimes you see what fellow pilots do and wonder, but I digress.) More often, though, we see a human being who made a series of decisions that may have seemed reasonable at the time, but added up to an NTSB investigation.