Originally Posted by
2StgTurbine
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.
First off…I rather have an FO that want to clear a wx by 80 miles (that will only consume about 100-200lbs more of gas) vs the one that wants to only deviate 5-10 miles and I have to explain them why we should keep going more to the left/right of the WX.
You’re supposed to be min 25 miles between cells and if you’re going above 5,000 ft. Couple of weeks ago I almost had to use emergency authority, because dispatch gave us a route, ATC changed it for one that goes into the WX and then they didn’t wanted us to deviate the way we wanted.
”there’s arrival traffic”…that’s none of my problem, I can’t deviate right because there’s a line of TStorms. Eventually we got what we wanted. We gotta start thinking that we have pax and FAs in the back walking even if you tell them to stay seated.
If I see blue skies…that’s where I’m going, that’s what I’m getting payed for and fuel is not an issue.