Originally Posted by
Podracer
Throughout my career, not just at Delta, I've always thought that there are about one third of pilots who do not take weather seriously enough. They act like you score points or something by deviating as less as possible. Its the type who's answer to everything at all times is "**shrug** we'll pick our way through."
I have flown with plenty of people who are scared of anything on the radar. I recently flew with an FO who wanted to clear a cell by 80 miles! Perhaps it was years of flying on the east coast with restricted airspace, but sometimes you do need to pick your way through a line of weather stretching from the Gulf to the Great Lakes. Not all radar returns are convective cells, and it does take some experience.
A common thing I have seen with those pilots is failing to take the winds into account. When they are going between cells, they try to go right in the middle of them. I would rather be 20 miles away from the downwind cell and 10 miles from the upwind cell rather than 15 miles from both.