It starts out as a nice chilly January morning in Monterey. The sky is calm, the air is crisp…and it is my day to fly in the left seat. 

Pilots are certified to fly both left and right seats at my company. Traditionally, the left seat pilot is the Pilot Flying while the right seat is the Pilot Monitoring. We fly as a crew until it’s time for someone to go home at the end of their rotation. It’s customary to swap seats each day so that a pilot performs Pilot Flying duties one day and Pilot Monitoring the next. 

It’s my turn to be Pilot Flying today and the schedule is taking us from Northern CA down to Houston TX.  The easterly course gives us a nice push with a 50 knot + tailwind. The challenge today is going to be during our landing phase because the Houston weather report warned of a crosswind with low clouds and minimal visibility. 

These conditions are what we call IMC, Instrument Meteorological Conditions, meaning we are going to need the guidance of the instruments to bring us into the runway environment, as opposed to just looking outside and seeing the runway, which is called VMC or Visual Meteorological Conditions. 

Descending into the Houston area, ATC calls out “an area of moderate precipitation, 12 o’clock, and 5 miles in diameter”.  Our view out of the window shows a large billowing stack of clouds confirming the warning. Without having to ask, the ATC controller directs us to “turn 10 degrees right for weather avoidance”.  

The weather radar dances with greens and yellows with each sweep of the scope. Light turbulence starts to tickle the wings as we approach the outer limits of the clouds. “Light Chop” feels like driving on an old dirt road after a rain storm created some divots. Not dangerous, but annoying, and I reach down and tug on my seat belt to snug it up a bit. 

Our Traffic Alerting system shows an aircraft 5 miles ahead and descending toward the same runway we’re planning to land on. His radio call gives us clues to the weather ahead. “Tower, we broke out about 300 feet AGL”, meaning he didn’t see the runway until only 300 feet above the ground.  

Three hundred feet may seem like a lot when you’re carrying a football down the field, but when you’re flying 2 miles per minute and descending at 500 feet per minute, it only leaves you with about 30 seconds to find the runway visually, assess your aircrafts location and determine if you can safely maneuver it into the runway touchdown zone. 

Some days, 30 seconds feels like 2 seconds. “100 to minimums, runway in sight, landing” and we’re down, taxiing to our parking spot. Whew, we made it. Three passengers happily dance off into the Houston day. 

But that was only leg 1 of 4 for the day. 

Upon landing, we’re told our outbound passenger is already in the lobby and ready to go. Off to the races it is. No fuel needed, we restock our pantry and tidy up our plane. A good quick-turn can be done in 15-30 min. This time we’re on the fast side and make it into the air quickly. 

Houston to Dallas is just a hop, skip and jump away so we don’t climb too high into the abyss. Today, however, just happens to be the day an ice storm sweeps across Central Texas, and our weather quickly deteriorates in front of us. 

With anti-icing systems in full heat we descend into what the airport reports as “freezing pellets”. Yeah, it sounds like you’d think it would when you fly through it at 250 knots. Noise canceling headphones don’t “cancel” the sound of pellets smashing into the windscreen and plane. It’s LOUD. The ice storm was in full affect directly over our flight path onto the runway.  This time we broke out of the clouds with a much better 500 ft above the runway.  

The Dallas Love Airport closes one of its parallel runways to conduct a condition check as we arrive. During periods of changing weather conditions, an airport needs to periodically update braking conditions in order to provide pilots all the information they need to determine whether or not their aircraft can land. Rain, ice and snow change the friction coefficients of runway surfaces. 

Some airplanes handle these changes better than others. Ultimately, it’s the Pilot In Command’s duty to determine if a safe landing can occur.  The closed runway leads us to land on the opposite side of the airport and further away from our planned parking spot. The longer taxi route, in freezing rain, lead to our discovery of iced over wings once parked.  Leg 2 of 4 complete. 

Our company planned a quick scheduled servicing of our auxiliary hydraulic system during our ground time.  While maintenance does their thing, we do ours and start preparing for the next leg. This time though, we had to plan and prepare to deice our aircraft before departure…and the fun begins. 

The City of Dallas is not synonymous with the terms ice, snow and freezing to most people. Locals will tell you about the time they lost power for a few days during the last ice storm but generally, Dallas doesn’t do ice. 

Airlines usually have their own deicing process and supplies near the terminal. My aircraft depends on the services of an FBO, Fixed Base Operator, and are a separate entity from those that often serve airline customers. Needless to say, their services are in high demand as the freezing precipitation covers the airport. 

We watch as a line of planes make their way to the deicing pad.  As the line grows, our hopes for an on-time take off fade. One hour turns to two. Another company plane had to leave their spot in line to return to the FBO and put more gas in the plane which cost them their spot in line. Dang. 

We keep our radios on the overhead speaker to track progress. As we creep to within 15 minutes of our expected deice time we get the dreaded news, the FBO ran out of fluids.  Takeoff time delayed until further notice turned into TAKE OFF CANCELED.  Not what we planned, but it’s what we got. My beautiful sunny day ends in ice. Maybe they’ll get some more deicing fluid by tomorrow….and maybe not. Another new adventure awaits and my day to fly is over.