Flying Life: The retirement of a Monday-morning quarterback

Two high-time, corporate pilots are tasked with ferrying a Hawker Beechjet 400A on a 30-minute leg to Hattiesburg Bobby L. Chain Municipal Airport (HBG) in Mississippi, where they will pick up their passengers and take them home. These two pilots do a preflight by the books. They do a thorough walk-around, run the performance numbers, and compute the weight and balance. They discuss the weather and the possibility of thunderstorms en route, as well as alternate plans should they be unable to land at Hattiesburg. A-plus work so far, right?

They depart on an IFR flight plan and head toward Hattiesburg, where marginal VFR is forecast. As they near the airport, they request vectors for the RNAV (GPS) approach for Runway 13, as the ceiling is just below 2,000 feet. All the while, they’re keeping an eye on the afternoon pop-up thunderstorms dotting the area. When their onboard radar shows a thunderstorm moving onto the final approach course, they request a hold until final is clear. After several minutes, they are ready to turn inbound. Radar shows another cell approaching the airport, but the pilots believe there’s enough time to get in safely. On short final, however, the cell moves over the field and the pilots initiate a go-around.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen to people who are experienced, professional, and hold airline transport pilot certificates, right? Here’s where things get hairy. The go-around process for a Beechjet requires several steps, including adding climb power, bringing up the flight director’s command bars for a straight-ahead go-around attitude, cleaning up flaps and gear, and reconfiguring the flight management system for the missed approach procedure. Add to that scanning the radar for thunderstorm avoidance and you have a high-workload situation. During this process, the pilots realize they will be unable to comply with the published westbound turn the missed approach procedure calls for because the thunderstorm sits squarely in their path, just to the west of the field. As their groundspeed nears 200 knots, it takes less than one minute for them to bust Restricted Area 4401 that sits directly on runway heading, three miles south of the airport. By the time they switch their radios back from CTAF to approach, they are met with an unhappy controller who wants them to exit his restricted airspace immediately.

What happened to those pilots? One of them is writing this column. After asking the controller for some time to sort out our next move, we ended up getting vectors back around for the same approach and landing without further incident. The thunderstorm was long gone by then. We went inside the FBO and had a long, productive debrief.

First, the stuff we did well: We were carrying plenty of contingency fuel, which allowed us time for that hold and go around. Also, we chose a go around rather than punching through a thunderstorm—always a good decision. Finally, when dealing with a handful of airplane while also trying to avoid the storm, we delayed calling ATC. Aviate, navigate, then communicate.

Now, the areas with room for improvement: Considering the high-workload situation brought on by the marginal VFR, turbulent air, thunderstorms in the vicinity, and the location of the restricted area, we should have delayed the flight. Also, when we briefed the approach, it would have been really helpful to discuss an alternate missed approach with the controller beforehand, given the fact that the location of the storm and the restricted area severely limited our options. Aviating safely requires a Plan B and sometimes a Plan C.

Now when I hear stories about people doing something silly in an airplane, I avoid the temptation to play Monday-morning quarterback. In the heat of battle, good pilots sometimes make bad decisions. We are human, after all. But, we have to be transparent enough to share our stories so that others can learn from our mistakes. We also need to be able to ask ourselves the hard questions: What could I have done differently? What can I do to make sure this never happens again?