The country boy made good, you’re coming home for a family reunion. However, the weather may paint you a fool unless you can finesse a sketchy approach.
You can’t ask for a better excuse to use your airplane for pleasure than a weekend trip to the island. Conditions are perfectly flyable IFR, but a potential mechanical issue puts the whole plan in jeopardy—or does it? What’s the right level of response to a problem that’s not an obvious show stopper?
It’s a dark and stormy night as you approach your home airport at the end of a long day. The showers passing through the region mean there is no obvious choice for an approach to end the day. What will you request from ATC that best balances convenience, risk, and payoff?
You’ve added quite a few handy tricks to your IFR bag, including departing VFR to get your clearance in the air. It’s always worked without a hitch—until this time when ATC asks a question you never expected. Now your options are vanishing and you have only seconds to come up with an answer.
Your hotrod airplane has the latest GPS navigator, but that opens the door to procedures you’ve never seen before. How will you handle an approach in IMC when it contains something you’ve never practiced? Think fast; at your current groundspeed, the decision will be made for you in 20 seconds.
You’re cruising along in IMC when you discover three different methods of predicting your fuel on landing show three different amounts. If the largest number is right, you have enough to be safe. If the smallest one is correct, it’s not even enough to be legal. How will you resolve this dilemma?
A “hurry up and wait” day for practice approaches creates a trap. When it springs, you find yourself in hot water after only minutes in the air. Is this an emergency that warrants drastic action, or just an abnormal situation necessitating calm thinking and execution of a practiced procedure?
The upgrade to a turboprop has been everything you hoped for, but now you’re moving fast in busy airspace with ATC repeatedly changing the plan. You have seconds to decide what a New York controller expects as you descend for one of the nation’s most notorious airports.
Who thought a busted heater could create an IFR dilemma? But that’s exactly what’s happens with your family high over the western mountains in IMC. You have few options and none are ideal. What will you choose?
A trip to a big city airport throws you a curve, and now you’re on climbout and confused without much time for clarification. What’s the proper choice in terms of safety, even if you’re not sure it’s correct by the book? And if you choose wrong, how much trouble might you cause?
Heading home from a weekend in Vegas, you and two friends face a wall of yellow-colored radar returns on your cockpit display. Is continuing on a good bet or a dangerous gamble?
It’s a dark and chilly autumn night with your family in the back as you approach the seaside airport your plane calls home. You’re faced with a dilemma: Accept a few minutes flying low and over the water on approach, or divert only for fear of something so unlikely, it’s hardly ever considered.
