Originally Posted by
Cleared4appch
Thanks alpine pilot! Great info! I will be submitting an app tomorrow. Hopeful to hear back from them. I’ve been wanting to fly freight for a long time. Sounds like it’s a lot of fun. I’ve always been drawn to Beechcraft too. How is the company in terms of backing up pilot decisions regarding wx? Do they respect your decisions to delay/divert if necessary?
Absolutely. Weather happens, so if it’s questionable at the destination just talk with UPS or FedEx and tell them what the closest alternatives that are forecasted to work might be, and ask them which alternate they would prefer.
Hailey, Idaho (KSUN) is a good example. It gets socked in all the time in the winter. It’s in the bottom of a steep valley and the approach only lets you get down to about 900 feet. If that flight can’t get in then UPS usually prefers to have it divert to Jerome followed by Twin Falls, depending on what the weather allows. If the weather is currently barely legal, but it’s forcast to clear up in a hour and a half, then they’ll let you wait on the ramp for better conditions at the destination before you depart. That’s better than flying up there, ending up in a hold, and then diverting to Twin Falls where it’s an extra 2 hour round trip for the drivers as the weather now begins to break at SUN.
In general, it’s simply expected that you’ll make good PIC decisions and try to reach the original destination if possible, and in a safe manner. If you can’t get in we already have a few prefered alternates, and if things really go sideways I’ve simply returned to SLC with the cargo still in the plane because even the alternates started looking bad. In that case I got fuel, waited a couple hours for weather to get better at a suitable airport, and then launched again.