On the ramp at Rifle, CO
On July 11th, I broke my personal record for the number of flight diversions in one day. This was due to winds, a one-way-in one-way-out airport, and possibly the largest line of thunderstorms this year. The TV weather stations had been discussing these storm days before and after. Reporters discussed the weather across the country, including severe thunderstorms and high winds at our destination, triple-digit temperatures in Nevada and Arizona, and the recent flash floods in Texas, New Mexico, and other states.
Before this day, I was flying government dignitaries from coast to coast and around the country. Working with government officials and their security teams can be fun. My colleagues, flying another company’s charter jet, were teasing me because they were flying a famous country singer out of Nashville to her next performance venue and knew that I had tickets to her concert. Our last female country singer passenger brought us breakfast tacos. That warmed her way into our hearts.
I was in Oakland, California, and the schedule on my JetInsight app indicated that we were to conduct a cross-country reposition flight from Oakland to Halifax, Nova Scotia. This flight was over 2,600 nautical miles and about six hours of flight time. This is a long way to move a jet when it’s empty. (read: no paying customer). And as we expected, our trip changed.
Our new “pop-up or ASAP” trip was to fly empty to Aspen, CO KASE, pick up passengers, and continue to Chicago Executive Airport (formerly known as Palwaukee). Due to the mountains, Aspen is one way in on runway 15 and one way out on runway 33. The winds were out of the southwest at 330 degrees with 14 knots gusting to 18,
which exceeded our airplane’s 10-knot tailwind limit for landing at Aspen. To carry out the trip, we had the passengers drive to Rifle, CO KRIL to meet us. This first diversion to Rifle was uneventful. The weather was beautiful, and we flew the ILS to runway 26 via the DME Arc from the COMFR IAF.
As we continued our trip, the weather was getting worse in the Chicago area, requiring us to file a routing around the thunderstorms to get to Chicago Executive from the South. The large line of thunderstorms moved faster than we expected toward Chicago, so we decided to stop in Des Moines, Iowa, KDSM, our second diversion. After a little more than an hour, we proceeded on to Chicago with an amended route to come in more directly, a little from the North.
As we continued, the weather hit the Chicago area and stagnated when it reached Lake Michigan. The winds were now gusting to 40 knots out of the West. This was too much of a crosswind for either runway 16 or 34. There was also no instrument approach to runway 34, and we did not think a circling approach at night in a thunderstorm would be prudent. We asked ATC about diverting to Chicago O’Hare International KORD with their runway 28s that aligned with the winds. They laughed and said something about us and 200 airliners. Chicago Midway KMDW triggered the same response. We next considered Gary, IN, KGYY, as we saw some lighter areas on our radar. ATC advised they just had reports of severe turbulence on that route, but that we could try it if we wanted to. We declined. At this point, we were just trying to get our passengers somewhat close to their destination to minimize further travel hindrances for them.
We saw Rockford, IL, KRFD, in front of us with acceptable weather. We dipped in Rockford for our third diversion without difficulty, but struggled to find ground transportation for our passengers and our crew after landing. After about thirty minutes, things came together, and our passengers were on their way, driving the final leg to KPWK.
Our flight operations department (Ops) said the nearest hotel they could find for us was 1 ½ hours away. We eventually checked into our Marriott Courtyard and called it a day, but only after a 15.4-hour duty day. We “technically” did not violate our FAA duty day as the FAA is quiet on what happens after landing and locating a hotel for the crew.
The following morning, we were hoping for an easy day. This was not to be the case. It started easily enough with Ops telling us we were going to do an airplane swap, leave our plane at Rockford, and take an airline flight from Chicago O’Hare to Nashville, TN. Upon landing, we were scheduled to go to the hotel. So, this was still looking good to us. However, when we landed in Nashville, we learned that we were not going to the hotel. Instead, we were to fly a “pop-up” trip from Nashville to Long Island, NY. We were still dragging from the long day before, but after discussing it as a crew, we believed we could do one more leg.
While reviewing the airplane records, we noticed that it had been written up multiple times for a Radar Altimeter inoperative problem; it had been repaired, checked, and approved to fly. We took off from Nashville KBNA and received a “Terrain, Pull UP, Pull Up” Warning audio messages shortly after takeoff. There was no terrain in front of us, and the Radar Altimeter was still not working. We also received a landing gear warning horn alert at 5000 feet and 250 knots. (Another inappropriate message for our altitude and airspeed.) It was difficult to communicate with ATC with the Warning messages going off. (These messages cannot be inhibited by pressing the DCU switches.) We returned to Nashville, KBNA, for a non-emergency, but certainly an urgent return to land.
Upon landing, my co-pilot/SIC (second in command) looked at me and said, “I’m calling in fatigued.” He certainly did not get any argument from the rest of the crew. We were all feeling the same way after our fourth diversion!
