Page 31 - June 2015 Volume 19 Number 6

Easy Way
taxi across an icy ramp to park next to a snow-bank in front of the FBO.
At an Italian restaurant that evening, we review the rather- hectic final twenty minutes of our
of just calling the Butler FBO on Unicom and requesting an airport advisory...we mutter to each other disgustedly, “now why didn’t we think of that before.”
Our calls to the FBO go unanswered, but after our third try a Cessna 172 comes back, stating he is making a touch-and- go on runway 29, and the weather is “about” 1000-foot overcast with three miles visibility. Since he used the Alaska-pilot’s code word “about” for the weather, we suspect it‘s much worse than that. How often do the actual conditions just happen to match the exact FAR requirements for VFR? But, at least we know what runway the local traffic is using, and that the weather is probably not below IFR minimums, so we set up the FMS and avionics for the ILS 29 approach.
We return to approach, but cannot get in a word edgewise about our belatedly-arrived-at plan to fly the ILS 29. We are at 8,000 feet, have all the de-ice equipment working in a mixture of rain and heavy wet snow, heading into the back side of a nasty cold front and are rapidly closing in on our clearance limit at CVG. To make things worse, we can
see on the multiple moving maps that BRNIE, the IF/IAF for the ILS 29, is disappearing to the left and behind us. It is not a good feeling to be blasting along at 200 knots, heading away from where you want to go, into deteriorating weather, not exactly sure what you are supposed to do next, and unable to talk to the controller.
Fortunately, just as we pass over CVG there is a two-second break on the frequency, and we jump in with “N44LG request direct BRNIE, then ILS 29 Butler”. The immediate reply is a clearance to do just that, plus “descend to 3,100 feet...cancel IFR on the ground... change to advisory...now.” All delivered so fast you could almost get the impression he was glad to get rid of us. Four minutes later, we are established on the ILS, inside of BRNIE. Another two minutes go by and, less than a mile out, at 700 feet AGL, we finally see the runway...not a clue as to how that C172 found it to be 1000 and three. We land in blowing snow and
otherwise routine three-hour flight from TIW. We are experienced, mature, professional pilots, after all, and should not be having such disquieting, adrenalin-arousing airborne experiences. In the end, we decide we got a bit complacent. We filed direct to the airport (HAO), figuring the weather would be VFR; if not, we would do our arrival planning after we received the ASOS. If that didn’t work, the controllers would just figure it out for us. As it turned out, the weather was bad, the ASOS was inoperative, and the controllers all down the line kept deferring the arrival plan to the poor final-approach guy, who, with the unexpectedly bad conditions, was almost overwhelmed.
Most of our last-minute urgency would have been avoided if, instead of filing ‘direct to the airport’, we
JUNE 2015
TWIN & TURBINE • 29