Yesterday I left around 2:30 pm to drive to Frankfort, watching some weather. It was supposed to be bad, then it was supposed to be fine, but while it's saying it's fine, I'm looking at it and it doesn't look fine. I'm taking Andy, Sharla, and two girls to drop them off at Norris Lake in TN. Clay is coming with me, as after I drop them off, I go down to Atlanta International to pick up Ethan's daughter, Amity, who is arriving on the Turkish Airlines from Istanbul after coming from a mission trip in Uganda. She lands at 8 pm. All is going well so far.
I get halfway to TN, and the weather down there is Really Bad. Really bad, and filling in fast and hard. There's no way around that and it's sitting on top of my airport with severe thunderstorms. So I power way back, slow down, and do a diverting vector to the east. The controller comes on and says there are no other airplanes within 60 miles of there so he doesn't know what to tell me. I told him I was slowing down to let it move through so I could land, and I'd like vectors to the east. It rained so hard it took bugs off my windshield, which was actually nice. ;) I see lightning over there, and what I'm looking at is definitely nothing to play with. I keep listening to the AWOS for the airport, and it goes from 1/2 mile and thunderstorm to a mile, and radar shows the weather moving past the airport, so I shoot the approach, come on in and land on the wet, short, downsloping runway, which is no problem in a turboprop. Pull up, let them off, and they have No Idea yet what kind of weather I was working around. But when they got to their condo, they had lost power, and their boat dock was broken/sunk. So they knew then. They then followed the rest of my flight to Atlanta out of curiosity. lol
I couldn't go from there to Atlanta, the severe weather was smack in the way. So I had to deviate almost due west, to Nashville, to get to the back side of it, and then swing back around and down to Atlanta. What should have taken 36 minutes took an hour and 20 minutes. Part of that is Atlanta vectoring, but the rest was me doubling the size of my flight just to go around that nasty stuff.
I land in Atlanta, first time I'd been there in years. Busiest airport in the world. On the way in, I hear an emergency Delta with fumes in the cockpit, wearing masks, and with a control issue too, landing no flap. All went professionally and well. Landing was easy, I was on 26R and the FBO was right off the taxiway. I did the math and figured it was cheaper to pay the $200 fee than it was to buy gas that would cost $430 more than if I bought it at home, to waive the $200. So no fuel. Clay and I got a ride over to the terminal, and we went to "International Baggage". No security to get there, just seats there to wait for her. Her flight was supposed to land at 7:50. We were there by 7:30. Except more thunderstorms moved in, and they didn't let them deplane, because nobody can be on the ramp with lightning within so many miles of the airport. She was on a bus ride that was supposed to be 8 hours that was 15. Then she was on 20 hours worth of airline flights. Now she's here, ready to go home, except she's trapped sitting on the plane until after 10 pm with screaming kids and frustrated people all around. Meanwhile, Clay and I were dying. No food, no drink, for hours. We're starving and there's nowhere we can go. I resorted to eating cough drops and a package of crushed peanut butter crackers from my purse that I shared with him. It was ridiculous. THEN they lost her bags. A bunch of people's bags. We finally get a ride back over to the FBO, get in the plane, they opened Atlanta back up, and they were swarmed with arrivals while we all sat on the taxiways.
I got PDC, which means my clearance texted to me, but the clearance guy still read it all to me anyway. Making sure I didn't goof it up there, I'm assuming, because the point of PDC is so they don't have to read it to you. But you goof it up there, you goof up a lot of people. So I read it back, he says yes, I go to ground, and ground says "Ohhhhh boy, let's see what we're going to do with you". Because there is a huge conga line of jet airliners waiting to leave and I am small and slow. But they did an amazing job. At one point they wanted me to cross Runway 26L and get on taxiway B, in a hurry, and it's a "switchback" taxiway. I go barreling across the runway when they say "GO", but I can't see the taxiway. He asks me "Do you see where it goes", and I admit "no", and he says "Go left, left, there, see it?" and I did, and it's a good thing he did that, because it ends in grass if you don't do a super sharp left turn. He could have left me to my own devices there, but he was helping. Then he told me to follow the UPS Heavy, and paused and said "You don't have to crawl up his exhaust though, you can leave some room". I laughed, because, duh, but I said "roger, thanks". Airplanes were backed up on the whole airport for 3-4 runways all at once. They did arrivals for awhile and no departures, then shut down arrivals and started sending us all. 3-4 runways, one guy starts rolling the next guy pulls into position and waits. One is off the runway, two goes, three lines up and waits. It was super impressive to see.
I was wondering about me, though. Typically they want you to wait 2 minutes after a big jet for wake turbulence. Well, there wasn't going to be any of THAT here. But still...I'm behind a UPS Heavy jet. The controllers being pros, they sent the jet, then they pulled another smaller airliner from the opposite side of the runway and had her go next. That helped dissipate and left enough time. American Airlines was cleared for takeoff and they told me to line up and wait. American hadn't even started rolling yet and I'm pulling onto the runway behind them, holding onto my controls as the jet blast buffets the airplane. It was a trip!
They sent me off, and I'd been given a SID (Departure) to fly "Via", which means you have to follow exact heading, altitude, directions without being told them, or you get a pilot violation. It was midnight. I'd had a long, tough day already. It's the busiest airport in the world, literally, and even busier than normal because of all the delays and backups. I'm single pilot, in a turboprop, and trying to make very sure I don't goof anything up. I did not. In fact, I was pretty pleased with the whole thing. Especially when my autopilot, which I used to help with my workload there, disconnected right after I put it on after climbing out, and I had to hand fly the departure, talk to everyone, read and meet the next waypoints and directions to follow, etc. And that's why I practice hand flying. When things settled down, I admit, I nodded to myself in satisfaction.
Get out of there and take a deep breath, but the night isn't over yet. There's more weather, and it has closed in on me with all the delays. ATC tells me my holes are closing in on me, say they see one at 12 o'clock, and one at 11 o'clock, both only 9 miles wide or so. But at my 12 o'clock all I see are dark clouds and lightning shows. My onboard nexrad and ADS-B weather say I should go right, but I don't like how right looks. So I tell them I'm going to take the 11 o'clock hole, which I can see. I thread in between two very active storm cells, and it's perfectly smooth and fine, but with lightning going off All Over the place. I work left and right, get through it, and then we're finally home clear for the rest of the flight. It was a lot of work load. And it's hard to tell someone "I know the weather on screen says I should do this, but my gut says go over here". The weather displayed on these units is delayed. So what I could see with my eyeballs told me right wasn't as good as it originally looked to them or my screens. That's why I want to stay VMC as much as possible in bad weather.
I land just before 2 am, and I'm home and in bed at 3.
My alarm was set for 7:30 am, because this morning I had to get up and drive back to Frankfort and fly up to Mackinac Island to pick up the four folks I dropped off there. They wanted to leave by 11 so that's why I had to get up that early. I get there, and we don't leave until 12:15 pm, because their taxi (horse and buggy) was running late, then once it got there, they had to stop at the stable to swap horses because the horses were tired. I could've slept in another hour and gotten FIVE hours of sleep instead of Four. *sigh* We dropped the family members off in Ohio and then came back to Indiana. More weather to deal with, but this time it fizzled, thankfully. Nothing burger.
I still hadn't really eaten. No food in the house, not hungry at 3 am, no breakfast stuff here, so I finally went through the drive-through at Culvers on the way home, and I was starving. I get back home, sit down, start doing paperwork (logbook, receipts, billing, airplane log, etc), and then boom, I'm down for the nap. I can't even keep my eyes open another minute. Steve asked if I wanted to go down to Sheridan to meet pilot friends for dinner and I'm like Lord, No. I'm STILL finishing up and catching up a bunch of stuff and it's 11 pm. But this time I'm going to bed, and I do Not have to get up early tomorrow. Whew.
So as you can see, that was a long day and a half. Nasty weather didn't help. Glad to be home. Nothing exciting is planned for tomorrow, and I'm going to need that to recuperate from this one!
Breaking out of the bad weather by TN
Two shots of mammatus clouds. You don't really want to fly into those.
I didn't even like being under them
Coming around the back side of the weather, turning towards Atlanta from here. That color of blue is no bueno
Bad shot of Atlanta
Bad shot of Atlanta Airport
Tower
Lined up behind UPS Heavy
Unfortunately it focused on the rain on my window and not the pretty lights and scenery and I didn't have time for anything else. American is still lifting off here and now it's my turn
Home
"Atlanta experiencing delays". Yeah...
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