Wx Watch: Flunking the Wx Test

When it comes to weather smarts, it often seems as though the entire general aviation educational community collectively gnashes its teeth. That's because it can be frustrating to look at accident reports and statistics and observe dangerous, recurring patterns. For example, every year pilots and their passengers die in VFR-into-IMC accidents, inadvertent thunderstorm penetrations, and icing conditions. Some pilots receive multiple preflight briefings that warn of adverse weather, then launch anyway. Many times, noninstrument-rated pilots diligently obtain preflight briefings that mention instrument weather, then take off into low ceilings and visibilities — as though the weather didn't apply to them. I'm sure you all have personal knowledge of other types of weather-related accidents that may have happened at your local airport, or along the routes you frequent.

Is there something wrong with the way we prepare pilots to face adverse, or even marginally adverse, weather?

Judgment

A big part of the problem is, of course, poor pilot judgment — and this goes for low-time pilots as well as the most experienced. For some reason, a chain of events leading up to an accident is initiated and perpetuated by risky pilot behavior.

Can you teach good judgment and risk management? Sure. The airlines do it, the AOPA Air Safety Foundation does it, and there are many good books and other publications out there that offer plenty of advice on how to mentally stand back and evaluate potentially risky situations as they unfold. These apply to all types of abnormal conditions and emergencies, not just those that are weather related.

Central to this type of education is an understanding of risky behavior types. By now, most of us should know that the FAA has identified four dangerous personality traits that can distinguish a risky pilot. These are:

• Impulsivity, or the "do something — anything — and do it now!" syndrome. This is risky because, in your haste, you may inadvertently do something to worsen the situation. To counter this syndrome, tell yourself to take the time to evaluate the problem before going off half-cocked. To use a weather-related analogy, let's say an impulsive pilot enters a patch of turbulence that's at the high end of the "moderate" scale. He'll want to start pushing and pulling on the controls to maintain altitude and/or heading, when he should slow to maneuvering speed and ride out the bumps.
• Macho, or the chest-thumping "I can handle anything" syndrome. This, for example, is the VFR (or not-current, instrument-rated) pilot who faces instrument conditions, yet presses on. Or the pilot who has survived past flights in adverse weather many times. This type of pilot, the FAA says, should remember that the rules are for everyone's protection, and following them is a very, very good idea. Besides, you can't handle everything. And just because you made it through lines of thunderstorms or droned on in icing conditions in the past is no guarantee that your number won't come up on this trip.
• Antiauthority. "Don't tell me what to do," these types say when faced with a problem that tempts an illegal solution. The pilot with this attitude might attempt a below-minimums or homemade instrument approach because he knows that if he can just make out that barn or parking lot through the fog, the runway is just ahead. This pilot should also follow the rules.
• Resigned. When confronting a problem, this type of risky behavior elicits a "What's the use? I'm doomed" internal message. "I'm icing up and losing airspeed and power," this type of pilot will say to himself, "and there's nothing I can do." Well, yes, there is. You can call for help, do a one-eighty-degree turn, land at the nearest airport, and hopefully climb or descend to a safer, warmer altitude.

Weather education as we know it

Assuming we agree that poor pilot judgment is the preponderant cause of most weather-related serious and fatal accidents, let's also admit that we're doing a fairly lousy job of teaching aviation weather.

You remember the drill from your student pilot days while preparing for the private-pilot knowledge test. First comes a study unit having to do with the composition of the atmosphere, atmospheric circulations, pressure systems, pressure gradients, the temperature lapse rates, mountain and valley winds, and water vapor. Next comes a focus on atmospheric stability, cloud classification, fronts, thunderstorms, icing, fog, and turbulence. There's usually a heavy emphasis on a thunderstorm's life cycle and the many dangers associated with flight in or near thunderstorms and in icing conditions.

Then it's time to shift gears. It's time to learn all of the aviation weather report and forecast products, and to memorize the codes and abbreviations so that you can decipher them. It's time for what psychologists call the lowest form of learning: rote memorization.

Finally, it's time for the exam. Of the 60 questions on the private pilot knowledge examination, however, only twelve deal with weather. Each question is worth 1.6 points, and a passing score is 70 percent. Ergo, you could miss every one of the weather questions and still pass with a score of 81 percent. Congratulations. As for the instrument rating knowledge examination, there are just nine weather-related questions.

Eight questions for a cause or contributing factor in 19.5 percent of all fatal, pilot-related general aviation fatalities in 1997! And 29.7 percent of all fatal, pilot-related accidents in single-engine retractables! This according to the AOPA Air Safety Foundation's 1998 Nall Report, a summary of general aviation accident statistics. Another ASF publication, an accident review of ten years' worth of statistics, entitled General Aviation Weather Accidents: An Analysis and Preventive Strategies, found that most weather-related accidents involved private pilots with fewer than 200 total flight hours, and that 82 percent of VFR-into-IMC accidents resulted in fatalities.

It's not just the dearth, it's the nature of those questions. Many are designed to test just how well you've memorized those METAR and TAF codes, or find out where you'd look for certain types of reports or forecasts. In other words, quantitative questions. Nothing that could really reveal your weather-related decision-making skills.

Don't get me wrong. Knowing the codes and all the other basics mentioned above are critical to safe flight. That's obvious. But what's also obvious is that we've got tests that measure how well we take tests, not how well we're prepared for dealing with the real world of weather flying.

Have kids who are heading for college? Then you know what I mean. The same phenomenon surrounds that hallowed rite of passage known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). How well your child scores on the SAT in large part determines where he or she will go to school, and it may even affect his or her future station in life. To ensure a high score, many parents send their children to SAT preparation classes — where they take practice tests using actual questions from actual SATs — to learn how to take the real McCoy. There's even a PSAT (Preliminary SAT) to warm up your 13-year-olds for the big league.

Prep school

It's no secret that pilots have their prep courses, too. Gleim Publications Inc. offers tutorial software for each of the pilot certificates, and King Schools, Sporty's, Jeppesen, and other educational outfits offer products designed to make passing the knowledge exams a snap.

Take these courses and you'll probably pass with flying colors. And why not? The questions used in the prep materials are the same as those on the real tests. Memorize the correct responses, test yourself, and soon you've learned the trigger words for the correct answers. I know someone who used one of the tutorials to prepare for a written exam, and he practiced so much that all he had to do was read the first few words of a question to know the correct answer. Now that's conditioning. It's a way of learning, and it's completely legitimate, but how much will you retain? How much can you take into the cockpit and draw upon for weather-related decisions?

Fear, loathing, and avoidance

After passing the knowledge exam and earning his private pilot certificate, the newly minted pilot is ready to begin his flying career. How well-prepared is he or she to deal with weather issues? It depends on the individual, of course, but many are terrified of weather. Terrified to the point of paralysis. They see clouds, remember the questions about thunderstorms, and fear that one of those puffy cumulus clouds will strike them out of the sky. They get a weather briefing; it mentions even the slightest chance of marginal weather; and they stay on the ground. This means they're deprived of the kind of gradual immersion into real-world, non-CAVU weather that they need to become confident, safe, and experienced pilots. That's weather avoidance, all right, but the wrong kind. By the way, all this goes for newly minted instrument-rated pilots, too.

The more pilots avoid learning about weather, the more they tend to keep on avoiding the subject. They read a few "Never Again" columns — or even "Wx Watch" — and see not learning opportunities, but assurances of near-death experiences.

Over time, even the basics can be forgotten. A few pilots may attend weather seminars that trigger questions never answered — or issues never posed — that create confusion.

I presented seminars on large-droplet icing and weather forecasting during AOPA Expo '99 in Atlantic City. After the forecasting seminar, many pilots came up to me for information on correspondence courses in meteorology, or to find out more about low-level jet streams in the Midwest's summers. But others had questions about very basic stuff.

I'm not faulting anybody for asking questions. In fact, you learn most by asking the so-called "dumb" questions. But I can't help but think that for every brave soul willing to risk appearing less than weather savvy, there are others who just let their questions — and their curiosity about weather — slide.

A suggestion box

There are several things I'd suggest to improve our weather education:

• Change the knowledge exams. Create questions aimed at probing a pilot's weather-related decision-making skills. This is not a new idea. Back in 1991, Jack Williams, USA Today's weather page editor, author of USA Today's Weather Book, and a contributor to AOPA Flight Training ( AOPA Pilot's sister magazine), presented a paper to aviation weather conferences on improving the weather questions on FAA exams.
• Update and rewrite the existing government weather texts to reflect the latest knowledge on such topics as large-droplet icing, low-level jet streams, mesoscale convective complexes, and other such recently-studied phenomena. The current texts — Aviation Weather (AC 00-62) and Aviation Weather Services (AC 00-45C) — are poorly written and organized, and they have been superseded in quality by many books on aviation weather published by the private sector. These include, but are in no way limited to: A Pilot's Guide to Weather Reports, Forecasts, and Flight Planning, by Terry Lankford; Aviation Weather Services Explained, by John Holley; Flying the Weather Map, by Richard L. Collins; Thunderstorms and Airplanes, also by Richard L. Collins; and Flying America's Weather, by yours truly.
• Create a new government text dealing with how to read and evaluate weather information at specific Internet sites that provide aviation weather. A primer on how to deduce information from DUATS providers is also in order. So is a simple text on the basics of weather forecasting. All the above products are necessary in light of the increased trend toward self-briefing. More and more, pilots have to become their own briefers, but there's little out there to help warn us of truly bad weather setups.
• Create context-based weather scenarios for pilots to discuss. The AOPA Air Safety Foundation has already broken ground in this area with its "trigger tapes." In brief segments featuring professional actors as pilots faced with pre- or in-flight weather challenges, viewers can watch errors in judgment unfold, and see how a weather accident can happen — all in a setting that encourages discussion of contributing factors.
• Urge flight instructors to expose their students to flights in marginal VFR and instrument meteorological conditions. Most training takes place in good VFR weather, and that's too bad. Students get a real benefit from flying in weather, not the least of which is an appreciation of the value of earning, and keeping current, an instrument rating.

What do you think? I'd like to hear your thoughts on where our weather education lets us down, and how you think it can be improved. One thing's for sure — we can do better, and it shouldn't be that hard to do.

Links to additional information on weather-related education and safety issues may be found on AOPA Online.

E-mail the author at [email protected].