The skies were clear in St. Louis as I awoke that early spring morning at 4 to prepare to fly to work as the physician in the emergency department at St. Francis Hospital in Mountainview, Missouri. Getting the weather for the relatively short 50-minute trip, the briefer warned of an unstable warm front in northwestern Arkansas moving toward the southeastern corner of Missouri. A thunderstorm cell approximately 10 miles wide was traveling in a northeasterly direction. However, the briefer felt confident that this cell would not be a factor and predicted that it would pass west of my destination by the time of my arrival.
After a 15-minute drive to the airport, I pulled my Piper Comanche 250 out of its hangar and started the engine. I picked up my IFR clearance and launched into the early morning darkness. My Insight Strikefinder, with its 200-mile radius, picked up the lone convective cell, which I estimated to be about 20 miles southwest of Mountainview. However, after 10 minutes in the air I realized that it was now moving directly toward my destination. The question now was who would be the first to arrive.
With the quiet drone of the engine, the airplane continued toward Mountainview. I asked ATC if it had the convective weather on radar. The controller answered that he had, and said that the thunderstorm was growing in size. It was now just a mile south of my destination. Then, as an afterthought, he confirmed that the thunderstorm was heading directly toward me and that there was now a line of thunderstorms about 40 miles long moving in a northeasterly direction.
I pressed on. Perhaps ATC's radar was not that accurate. My own Strikefinder indicated that the storm seemed to be centered about 20 miles south of Mountainview. I could see the lightning strikes throughout the southwestern sky, although I could not judge the cell's distance since all I could see was a vague black void punctuated by distant electrical discharges. I was flying in pitch-blackness at 6,000 feet under an overcast sky; sunrise was one hour away. I had an ominous feeling that my airplane was being drawn inexorably toward a magnet from which there would be no escape.
Having apparently conflicting data and still flying free of clouds, I pressed onward, hoping that I would arrive in Mountainview before the thunderstorm. Twenty miles from my destination, I was cleared to descend to 3,200 feet. I had the approach plate for the NDB approach into Mountainview. Just as I expected to get the clearance for the approach, center told me (for the first time) that because the altimeter setting for Fort Leonard Wood was unavailable, the instrument approach into Mountainview was not authorized and only a VFR approach would be approved.
I was not authorized to descend any farther. My heart sank. I did not think I would be lucky enough to both beat the thunderstorm and get into my destination with a VFR approach. However, at 3,200 feet and a mere 10 miles from the airport, I was still free of clouds. Just as I was weighing my options, I was engulfed in clouds and found myself in night IMC. There was no point in looking outside the aircraft now. Lightning, in all quadrants, now diffusely lit up the cockpit, dwarfing the red lights on the cockpit ceiling that had just moments before been the only source of its illumination. Just as suddenly, turbulence buffeted the aircraft and the plane became more and more difficult to control.
A moment later, rain started to hit the windshield in such a deafening roar that I could hear the drops pelt the airplane through the insulation of my headset. My charts, which had been sitting in the seat beside me, began to fly around the cockpit, bouncing off the windshield and ceiling. The situation was getting worse very quickly, and I could feel myself begin to panic. I never should have gotten myself in this situation. I promised myself that if I ever got out of this alive I would never again go up against a thunderstorm — let alone trying to battle it at night.
I instinctively and immediately initiated a turn to the north, trying to keep the wings as reasonably level as I could and maintaining maneuvering speed. I told ATC of my condition and that I was breaking off my approach and needed an immediate vector to a VFR airport. I was vectored to Rolla, Missouri. My charts, now in a disheveled mess scattered throughout the cockpit, were the only witnesses to my near-death experience.
I landed in Rolla just as the sun was beginning to rise. I got out of the airplane, looked at the morning sun, and realized just how beautiful the daylight really was. Maybe I was just happy to be alive. As I looked back on the preceding 75 minutes, I realized that with the unstable atmospheric front and the presence of at least one thunderstorm in such close proximity to my destination, I should never have attempted to continue toward my objective. I should have anticipated quickly deteriorating weather conditions. When the weather did deteriorate, I should have immediately deviated to an alternate airport. No flight is worth dying for.
Dr. David Tarlow, AOPA 1228276 , of St. Louis, Missouri, is an 850-hour pilot with multiengine and instrument ratings. He owns a Piper PA-24-250 Comanche.
"Never Again" is presented to enhance safety by providing a forum for pilots to learn from the experiences of others. Manuscripts should be typewritten, double-spaced, and sent to: Editor, AOPA Pilot , 421 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701.
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