Page 15 - Volume 18 Number 6

Part
When we exit the taxiway and enter the Aero Services ramp, the Lear nearly comes to a crunching halt. No one has plowed the ramp, and the Lear’s small-diameter tires have trouble getting through 6–8 inches of thick, wet snow. We power way up just to keep the airplane rolling and, with some difficulty, reach the lineman who is energetically waving us forward and clear of the taxiway. One of the passengers opens the door, and the first two guys to get out slip and fall in the snow. It turns out that a sheet of slick ice is under the snow. The rest of us stare cautiously out the door, and wish we had on crampons and mountain boots rather than black uniform shoes.
The next couple of brave men to exit discover that, by carefully hopping from one fuel-truck track to another, they can make their way to the FBO without falling down. Weaving back and forth like tacking sailboats, the rest of us follow. After the airplane is fueled, we do a careful walk-around and find the mounds of snow pushed up in front of our main gear and nose wheel have hardened and now look remarkably like a big, solid, white wheel chocks. We remove that with our hands, get back in, and crank up the airplane with numb fingers.
The takeoff and 25-minute flight up to Juneau at FL260 goes by quickly, and we arrive over the Sisters VOR (SSR) to find the weather has deteriorated. They are calling it two miles with a 2,000-foot overcast, which is below the usual minimums. But, they are assigning the LDA ‘Z’ approach to runway 8 (which has lower minimums), for airplanes that have the needed approval. We take that and break out at 2,000 feet, landing with light snow falling. During landing, the plow trucks are waiting off to the side, with the runway and taxiway fairly clear. Reaching the ramp near the FBO, we find it was recently plowed, but in the process all the fuel
trucks and other ramp vehicles were parked out of the way, close to the building’s door, leaving us to park the Lear out in the tulies. Getting out of the airplane and walking to the FBO on the ice is risky, but this time, at least, no one slips and falls down.
While we wait for our passengers to finish their business, the temperature drops a degree and the snow continues falling, plus some fog drifts in, dropping the visibility to nearly zero. Alaska Airlines, operating under Part 121, cancels their pending departure. Operating under Part 91, we can legally depart but decide to defer even thinking about it until we can at least see the airplane from the FBO window. A half-hour or so goes by, the visibility improves to between 1⁄4 and 1⁄2 mile, and Sitka, which is reasonably nearby, becomes almost VFR. We call Juneau Ground and ask if we can depart to the northwest, which will take us over the water and away from the mountains (opposite to the direction we landed). They say, ”no problem... no one else is flying”, and assign us runway 26 and the ASORT Two departure.
The engines get started and we grope our way off the FBO ramp to taxiway Charlie, only to find the markings on the 26 parallel (Alpha) are all obliterated by snow and the taxiway visibility is less than that reported for the runway. One of us carefully taxis the airplane, the other monitors the airplane’s ground position on the GPS iPAD. We enter runway 26 via taxiway Golf, and back-taxi to the very end to turn around. The tower says they cannot see the airplane, but they clear us for takeoff and tell us to notify them when rolling. We take off and climb out at over 3,000 feet per minute...something a Lear is very good at. Less than four minutes later, we are on top in bright sunny conditions and headed for Valdez. The flying part is easy, the ground part...not so much.
Valdez receives little business aircraft traffic in the winter and has no fuel, no de-icing equipment, and no FBO or hangars to get the airplane out of the weather. For these reasons, together with the fact that we really don’t want to get stuck there, we very carefully plan our arrival and departure before agreeing to go. We must have enough fuel on touchdown to get us back to
JUNE 2014
TWIN & TURBINE • 13