Page 8 - Volume 18 Number 1

But, on this trip, by the time we arose in Lafayette, there is a line of thunderstorms about 100 miles offshore of Florida’s west coast, gradually moving northward. The cells are spaced quite close together, with tops well into the Flight Levels. As the day warms up, this is all expected to worsen. Given that the Florida Panhandle is the recipient of this weather, we decide cutting across the north side of the system would be unwise. We elect to delay our departure until later in the day; the forecast says that the thunderstorms will diminish, the cells becoming more widely spaced as the line moves northward. That evening, a bit before sunset, the radar proves that prediction to be quite accurate, and we depart KLFT for KFXE, crossing the shoreline just southeast of Houma.
The initial hour of the flight is smooth enough, and there’s even a slight tailwind. About halfway through the crossing, as we approach CIGAR intersection on Q102, we can see a few widely- spaced towering cumulus clouds in the dusky distance. We climb to FL230 to give us better perspective, hopefully putting us on top of what appears to be resolving weather. The controller tells us the cells are widely spread, with tops below our altitude, and aircraft ahead have been getting through without any problem. With this reassurance, we fly on, eastbound into the night.
Early evenings’ absolute blackness is present as we approach the line of weather, making lightning, not previously visible, seem uncomfortably close and very obvious. There’s a cloud base under us, with tops at about 18,000 feet, which occasionally flashes white, but directly ahead at FL230 the path seems reasonably clear on our lightning detector. We continue on, doing about 220 knots and expecting landfall near Venice in less than 30 minutes. But then, we get the fire light.
In the simulator, problems always seem to compound themselves, and,
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JANUARY 2014