Jetjok

Without question they would have been like blind men stumbling around looking for a giant aircraft, that was hiding in plain sight. There was absolutely no visibility. I bet the real RVR's were somewhere around 100/100/50. It's a good thing that the jet didn't care.

JJ

WAFP

My first assignment out of UPT was flying C-21s at Andrews AFB. BTW, that was a kick a$$ assignment. Anyway, I was scheduled to fly the AMC/DO, the Chief of AMC/Stan Eval and 3 other AMC evaluators from Andrews back to Scott AFB, IL. It was the summer time so I was expecting crappy wx en-route and at Scott. The forecast called for thunderstorms around the field with vis right around 5mi.

During our descent we pulled up ATIS and it said that is was BKN035 with 5mi vis. Winds weren't that bad but getting worse. We were about 30min early so we looked to be getting in ahead of the worst weather. Flying just below the puffies I had my Co call up the Metro station at Scott to get an update on the incoming tstms. They said that they'd be on station in about 25min. That translated into "make this a quick approach". I had chosen to fly an ILS approach to be safe (instead of the quicker, but more variable visual apprch). This would've been a great idea, but the wx hadn't checked off on my plan and put a lvl 4 cell right on the final for the runway at about 4mi. So I did my "pilot $h!t" and tried to make it work.

I revised my plan to fly a visual for 14R by flying a 45 to downwind (like back in private pilot days). This would allow me to shorten my approach to keep the pattern close and hopefully beat the weather. Flying towards the field looked ugly...really ugly. The SW side of the field looked BLACK and we were flying right towards it. I slowed to lower the gear, got the flaps and entered the 45 to downwind. Tower updated us and said the crosswinds were getting worse (the C-21 has a max of 25kts of cross), now blowing at 20kts. This was going to be close, but I really thought I could make it happen.

I picked my perch point and then called my base, gear and full stop. 30 degrees of bank and off I went. Just before half way through the turn my Co said "look at the dust blowing in the field over there", so I looked and it looked like a tornado was getting ready to cross the center line to the runway. At that moment I checked my airspeed and saw it just jumped +20kts IAS and I almost over-speed my flaps. Windshear!!! Sure enough I next got a -20kts decrease and the plane dropped about 200ft. Now that wouldn't be so bad, but I was only at about 900ft AGL when this happened and I was in 30 degrees of bank. Not good. So what's the windshear recovery???? Max perform the aircraft, but who teaches that technique while in a descending banked turn? Time to do more of that "pilot $h!t".

I couldn't roll out because there was a lvl 5 tstm just 2 miles from the field to the SW, so I firewalled the throttles and pulled up till I knew I was flying away from the ground. My copilot saw just under 400' AGL before we were climbing away. The lowest speed he saw was Vref-8. Pucker factor for sure.

That was the worst of it, but the "approach" didn't end there. With the AMC/DO in the back and half of AMC Stan/Eval giving me their opinion it wasn't easy to make the decision to divert and mess up their day. Not once, not twice, but three times I had Stan/Eval folks tell me that the weather was "Ok" back at Scott, even though it was getting hammered by tstms. I did the right thing and diverted to STL to fly a pretty hairy ILS with max crosswinds.

The rest of the day was just as bad with an approach into MEM where I felt like I could reach out and touch the lightning. It was the worst weather I'd flown in.

Oh yeah, the AMC/DO never said "thank you" and neither did the Stan/Eval guys. They just looked ****ed as they walked off to the crew van that came to pick them up.

KC10 FATboy

This one is pretty good too ...

YouTube - Cat 3C Landing Brussels 200m Vis

ARFF

Most new rigs have thermal imaging cameras.

Dougdrvr

Concur on the reverse thrust but one thing that stood out in that story was the comment on the smooth landing. NOT what you want in that situation.

joepilot

Lots of water on the runway often makes for a smooth landing, even if the same landing on a dry runway would not have been. This is especially true if you land in a slight crab.

Joe

Dougdrvr

Yeah, I know......it just reminded me of a story a friend of mine told me about dead heading home on an airplane that hydo-planed off the end of a wet runway(no damage). As they were deplaning into the mud, one the passengers said "But he did make a smooth landing?"

Sirecks

My most "puckered" approach came in the first half of an attempt to land.

A while back, our command and control had taken most of the authority away from an aircraft commander to choose his or her amount of fuel needed to get somewhere. This is the short version. Yes, all the other Air Force heavy guys reading this, I know there is more to explain but I don't want to bore everyone.

We were doing a simple Presidential support run from Charleston, to Andrews, to San Antonio. A quick, easy, fun filled day for sure. The weather sheets showed the weather at Andrews to be nice, mostly VFR, scattered clouds, etc. So, they didn't plan us with an alternate and only gave us enough gas (so they thought) to get to Andrews, which was a meager 38K or so. For our jet, that's not a lot. They planned us to land at our min gas of 16K. That is when all our lights and bells come on in the jet for min fuel. Also we have some error in our readings when the tanks get that low so you have to figure on a bad reading when you get below 16 or so.

We call and ask, what's the deal? Can't we just get the gas to go to Andrews then to San Antonio? They say, no because the amount of gas we would burn carrying the weight of the extra gas for the 1 hour flight up to Andrews they can't afford. In other words, no tankering fuel.

So, we ask for the extra 5K that we are allowed to ask for. We have just over 40K in the tanks.

We take off and go to Andrews. As we fly North, we hit ORF (Norfolk) and realize that everything under us and heading North is getting increasingly cloudy. As we start the arrival, we notice that the could deck is becoming solid. Nothing scattered about it.

We start to pick up Andrews ATIS. It is below CAT II mins. We can only fly CAT II's. We don't have CAT III capabilities in the C-17. So we listen to Reagan, Dulles, and Baltimore. All below CAT II min's. We are told by Andrews to intercept the localizer 20 miles out and track it inbound and declare our intentions. We look at our fuel and see we only have 20K on board. We look at each other and kind of go, "well, now what do we do?"

We burn about 16K an hour (on average) so that means we got about 15 minutes to no kidding min fuel.

We start thinking about options. Fly out towards the water .... track the loc inbound and trust the radar altimeter and try to land .... get ready to ditch by having everyone get their chutes on .... this is where this approach became my scariest one. Looking around with no landing field around and running out of gas and time. Seriously talking to our crew about bailing out made it pretty real. Then we think about Dover AFB, on the coast in DE. It isn't that far and maybe being near the water it has a better cloud cover. Also, it's by the water so if we have to ditch, we can do it in the Delaware Bay there.

So, we break off the approach, make a right hand turn direct to Dover. We get to Dover and there is a "bubble" under the clouds, giving the field above CAT I ILS mins. So we proceed to Dover and land. All the fuel warnings are going off as we land with about 14K. As we park the jet, and shut her down, the field starts calling for CAT II mins. We just made it.

Now, think back to taking that extra 5K we were allowed. Had we not taken that, we would have landed with about 9K total.

We walk into Base Ops, call our command and control to tell them where we are and why. It was not a pretty phone call.

That's my story.

Mink

Sirecks,

Great story, not a pretty situation.

So you have no authority as PIC to walk up to the fuel truck guy and tell him to keep the fuel flowing? If so, that sucks.

Dougdrvr

That IS a scary story. It's scary to think about bailing out of a perfectly good airplane with so many CATIII facilities in the area ( whether you're qualified or not). Were you the AC? I didn't even think you carried 'chutes anymore.