Crying wolf

There are too many notams, but some are really important

Any pilot who’s received a computerized weather briefing knows that you can easily kill a few trees printing out all the notams for even a short flight. Among all of the unlit towers and unusable VOR radials found in there, you might run into one that can either make or break your flight plan.

I had just completed my first type rating and qualified as captain in a BAe Jetstream 41, a 29-seat turboprop regional airliner. I was to start my initial operating experience (IOE) on a scuzzy day in the Northeast. Our first leg was from Washington Dulles International Airport to Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, New York. I received the flight papers in the crew lounge and reviewed them before my instructor captain arrived. Although I was new to captaining, I was familiar with the pile of paperwork that the printer spit out, since I had been a first officer with the airline for almost a year. Besides, during simulator training, the instructors loved to throw little surprises into the paperwork to test your mettle, like a closed taxiway or an inoperative approach lighting system. In the real world, however, it was very rare for critical components to be notamed as unavailable during the daylight hours when airports see the most traffic.

I had been a Jetstream co-pilot for some 500 hours, so airplane handling was not much of a concern to me—although all the dispatch legalities were intimidating. So I pored over the forecasts and focused on whether our destination and alternate weather was legal. I noticed that Runway 9, Stewart’s main runway, was closed; the notam included a time range. I don’t know whether I simply assumed that the times would be in the overnight hours or I misread it as local time instead of Zulu. Either way, I glossed over it. After all, the main runway at an airline airport is basically never closed unless there’s an accident or long-term reconstruction project.

My training captain arrived, and we discussed the IOE rules and the first leg. He, too, looked over the paperwork. I saddled up in the left seat for the first time as captain of an airliner. Everything went great on our flight up to Stewart until my instructor, the pilot not flying, came back with the ATIS information. Runway 9 was closed—surprise! My heart sank since I knew this oversight might mean failing IOE. We scrambled to figure out whether we could legally attempt an approach under Part 121 rules.

The airport was landing on Runway 16 and the ILS to Runway 9 was in use, with a circle-to-land on 16. Our circling minimums per our operations manual at the time was a ceiling of 800 feet, which just happened to be the reported ceiling of the overcast. We were legal to try, thankfully.

The pressure was on, for sure. We actually broke out around 900 feet and I executed a textbook right-hand pattern to Runway 16. I had to, because I figured my completion of IOE was in serious jeopardy, thanks to my paperwork oversight. After the passengers were gone, my captain left the cockpit door closed and began talking about the flight, praising the aircraft handling and execution of a textbook circling approach. I was ready for the “but.” Surprisingly, all he said was, “It would have been nice to know about the closed runway before we had left.”

I confessed my obviously incomplete study of the notams section and advised him that my lesson was learned. Thankfully, the rest of IOE went on without a hitch and I was signed off. I was lucky this guy was laid back. I think he realized that as the instructor captain he should have looked over the paperwork a little more closely as well. Perhaps he passed me because my failure would call attention to his neglecting to check notams?

Not long after this incident, our airline raised circling minimums to a 1,000-foot ceiling and three miles visibility. I immediately thought of that flight and the predicament we would have been in had those rules been in place during my IOE flight. Although notams appear to be crying wolf 99 percent of the time, there just may be a little surprise waiting for you at your destination or alternate airport.