One of the most important considerations a pilot must make is the assessment of the weather conditions forecast for the flight. Weather at the departure airport, en route, and at the destination airport are required pieces of information the pilot must assess before embarking.

During training, student pilots are required to learn about cloud types; determination of what constitutes a ceiling; precipitation types; icing types, and conditions conducive to icing; low and high level winds, and sources of weather statistics. Weather data is perhaps the most critical piece of information the pilot must gather to ensure the safe conduct of the flight.  

 

The Airplane Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Foundation publishes a yearly report analyzing the causes of aircraft crashes and categorizes them statistically. 

According to the 2006 Nall Report, an annual review of the prior year’s aviation safety record dedicated to the memory of Joseph T. Nall, an NTSB board member who died as a passenger in a plane crash in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1989, pilot-related accidents account for nearly three-quarters of all aircraft accidents.

 

Within this category is included take-off and landing accidents, fuel exhaustion and mismanagement, maneuvering, and weather-related accidents. Although weather-related accidents account for only 4.6 percent of pilot-related accidents, they account for 13.6 percent of fatal accidents within this category.

Pilots have several sources available to collect weather information.

Many pilots pay particular attention to weather reports available on local television, the weather channel, or newspapers.

These sources allow monitoring of weather trends and forecasts of changes in the weather conditions.

 

Additional weather information is available to pilots through weather briefings from sources under contract to the Federal Aviation Administration. These sources are known as Direct User Access Terminal Service, and are administered by two private companies: Computer Sciences Corporation and Data Transformation Corporation. Both are accessible to pilots via the Internet or by telephone.

 

Services in addition to weather briefings are the filing of flight plans and access to Notices to Airmen that contain information critical to flight operations, such as changes in frequencies for navigation or communication facilities or airport and runway closures.

While airborne, pilots also can obtain current weather conditions by radio from flight service stations, Flight Watch, or from Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Many center controllers have weather radar data available that provide real time information on hazardous weather conditions, such as thunderstorms, and can assist a pilot to avoid those areas.

Aircraft also can be equipped with weather avoidance devices that include radar and “stormscopes,” electronic instruments that detect the lightning and heavy precipitation present in thunderstorms.

Surprisingly, it is not the heavy rain that is most dangerous to aircraft, but the extreme turbulence of a thunderstorm that makes it a dangerous weather phenomenon. 

Pilots must obtain current weather for the time of the proposed flight and must determine if weather conditions are forecast to be consistent with visual flight rules or instrument flight rules. VFR conditions generally require ceilings of 1,000 feet above the surface and flight visibility greater than three miles.

IFR conditions require that the aircraft must be equipped for flight in instrument meteorological conditions, be cleared by Air Traffic Control to operate in those conditions, and that the pilot be certified to operate the aircraft in those situations. 

For information on conditions at an airport, a pilot may contact or monitor automatic weather systems and receive that information by radio or telephone. Automated Terminal Information Systems provide details at many airports and provide listings of current weather conditions, runways in use, and additional important operational reports.

Information obtained from ATIS is referred to with a letter in the phonetic alphabet, and the pilot tells the control tower that he has received the statistics.

Another system in use is an Automated Weather Observation System.

This is a system that makes use of specialized equipment to measure wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, visibility, and ceilings.

These measurements are then recorded and can be accessed by a pilot on radio or by telephone. Santa Ynez Airport has an AWOS.

Santa Ynez airport also has a webcam that is aimed at the fuel island.

This webcam allows a pilot to view the weather conditions during daylight hours and provides temperature and barometric pressure for the airport at that moment.

The webcam can be accessed by Internet at www.santaynezairport.com and clicking on “webcam.”