Page 14 - Volume 18 Number 6

During recurrent training, you spend hours honing the ability to fly various instrument approaches to minimums in truly bad winter weather. What they don’t tell you is – the really tricky part starts after the airplane is on the ground.
Fellow corporate pilot Doug Fritz and I leave Skagit Regional (KBVS) near Seattle, northwest-bound in the Lear 35 just before dawn on a cold mid-winter morning, with seven passengers on board. The plan for the day is to leave three in Ketchikan (PAKT), two in Juneau (PAJN), then take the remaining two to Valdez (PAVD). We are to wait there for a couple of hours, then reverse the whole procedure, ideally getting everyone home by dinner time.
The sun is peeking over the eastern horizon as we start down out of FL360, about 70 nm southeast of Ketchikan. The AFIS says it is snowing in PAKT, with
12 • TWIN & TURBINE
visibility of 1–2 miles, scattered clouds at 2,000, broken at 2,500 and overcast at 3,000. The wind is from the west gusting 12–20 knots. We plan for the RNAV (GPS) Bravo approach to runway 29 and request direct to the IAF (GIRTZ) from Anchorage Center. They clear us for the approach and hand us off to Ketchikan Radio on 123.6. Ketchikan tells us there is a snowplow on the runway and braking action is unknown. When we start the 90-degree left turn onto final from the IF (LATRY), we can hear the plow driver tell the FSS that he is clear of the runway. We break out at 2,500 feet to see that the VASI lights are all white, and at 144 knots we are a bit fast...not where we want to be, given the runway conditions.
The power comes all the way back, full flaps go down and pretty soon we have two reds and two whites on the VASI, plus our calculated Vref of 132 knots. The touchdown is smooth in blowing snow, the reversers are deployed and we make a tentative test of the braking...seems OK, although it’s hard to tell with all the deceleration generated by the engines. An Alaska Airlines 737 crew behind us on the same approach asks about braking. We are nearing the end of the runway and nail the brakes to see what happens...good braking, we tell them. It is pretty obvious that their concern, (like ours) is not the approach down to minimums, but what is going to happen once on the airplane is on the ground.
JUNE 2014
The Tricky
by Kevin Ware