Flight Lesson: Feeling the heat

The flight started early and was uneventful. I took the crew car at Orlando to get some lunch before returning to Fort Lauderdale.

In typical Florida fashion, the late morning into the afternoon was starting to heat up. Born and raised in South Florida and having done all my training here, this was nothing new to me, but even when I was flying, I preferred the evening hours.

I was solo and couldn’t get much higher (my typical solution to the afternoon heat) because of cloud cover. There were holes in the clouds and the ceiling was broken, but I opted to stay below them. I did my usual practice of leaning toward the door and aiming the air vent my way. But halfway home, the heat was really catching up to me. I don’t know if I was dehydrated (I stay very hydrated) or suffering from heat exhaustion, but I was slowly but surely becoming lightheaded and intermittently seeing stars. At first, when it was minor, I wanted to tough it out. When the headache started to settle in, followed by becoming lightheaded, I made the decision to divert.

For the preceding 20 or so minutes, I had been keeping tabs on the three or so closest airports. I decided to divert to Witham Field in Stuart. I don’t think it was the closest airport from my position (Okeechobee County Airport was, as well as being closest to my flight path) but I decided to shoot for Witham for a few reasons: It has a tower, I’ve been there before, and it’s on the coast.

I tuned the radio to the tower and waited my turn. I got in once or twice with my N-number waiting to be acknowledged, but the tower controller had some traffic to deal with. At this point I had fully shifted from toughing it out to getting on the ground, so the next pocket of silence I called with the N number immediately followed by “I’m lightheaded and I need to land now” or something along those lines.

I was immediately acknowledged and even at 10 or so miles out, he got landing traffic on the ground right away, and anyone else in the air out of my way, and got me on the ground. I strolled right up to the FBO, hydrated, and retreated to the pilot’s lounge, where I must have napped for three or four hours.

Afterward, I got back in the air and flew the coast back home. One of my considerations when choosing Stuart was its location on the coast, so I could fly a mile off the shoreline the rest of the way home in the late afternoon/evening and enjoy the refreshing, cool ocean air. I got home safe and sound and ultimately am happy I decided not to tough it out.

ATC was professional as always and I thank them for that. When I got on the ground they checked up on me but I told them I was fine. In hindsight, I’m glad I opted to divert, because who knows if I would’ve been fine otherwise? I’m usually pretty conservative when it comes to safety, but in that moment I initially thought that I’d be fine having done this kind of flying plenty of times. At the end of the day, play it safe.