AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2020 - 97

P&E

NEVER AGAIN

Mother's Day
get-home-itis
Planning could have been better

SARAH HANSON

BY TOM SNOW

A MOTHER'S DAY LUNCH DATE caused a case
of get-home-itis that could have been fatal.
Our family-owned business deals in
new and used resistance welding machinery, and we've utilized general aviation for
corporate travel since the early 1980s. After
a succession of single-engine aircraft, by
the date of this flight in the spring of 1994, I
was the proud owner of a 1969 PA-30 Twin
Comanche.
When a like-new welder we had previously sold came up for auction near
Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday
before Mother's Day, it was an ideal excuse
to extend a business trip to Cleveland, Ohio,
and try to snag a bargain before flying home
to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I expected to be home on Saturday afternoon, and to celebrate Mother's Day I had
promised to take my mom and my wife
to lunch after church on Sunday. Perfect

May weather made for an easy flight from
Lost Nation Airport to what is now Arnold
Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe.
The welder went too high at the auction,
but at least I was able to meet the successful bidder and offer technical support. With
plenty of daylight left for the planned 3.5hour flight home, I was soon in the rental
car headed back to the airport. Only then
did I notice the towering cumulus clouds in
all directions.
The internet-based flight planning services we now take for granted were not
available 25 years ago, but a call to flight service confirmed that it would be challenging
to fly home through a line of thunderstorms
stalled over the mountains of West Virginia.
My Twin Comanche had monochrome
radar and plenty of range with tip tanks,
so I probably could have picked my way
through the storms. However, since the

briefer mentioned that the weather on
Sunday morning would be benign, with
just an overcast layer, I figured that discretion should trump valor.
No problem, I thought. I'm tired from
the trip and I should spend another night
and fly home early tomorrow morning.
I can still arrive in plenty of time for my
Mother's Day lunch date.
Although the forecast for the next
morning sounded good, for some reason I
did not sleep well that night. I got up early
and the airport was dark and deserted
when I arrived.
The briefer had a big surprise for me
when I called: Widespread icing conditions
and mountain obscurations were now forecast for the Appalachian region between
Latrobe and Chattanooga. However, so far
that morning there had been no reports of
"known ice" and the cloud layer was "only"
from 7,000 feet to 10,000 feet at Latrobe,
with the freezing level at 9,000 feet.
Being young and naïve, plus not wanting to disappoint my mother and wife, I told
the briefer that I would "go take a look and
give a report." Although my airplane's only
ice protection was a heated pitot tube, I reasoned that my little twin had enough power
to zoom through the freezing level even if
the clouds contained ice.
I took off in the dark and the first part
of the IFR flight went well. As I climbed
into the clouds, which were exactly as forecast at 7,000 feet, I thought I had it made
because the wings stayed clean for the first
2,000 feet. However, when I saw rime ice
accumulating on the front of the tip tanks
and then along the leading edge of the
wings and the windshield, I now had the
dubious distinction of being the pilot who
would report known ice.
OK, I thought as I pushed the twin's
throttles to maximum and went through
9,000 feet, It's time to expedite the climb and
zoom out of this. I pulled back on the yoke to
increase the airplane's angle of attack.
That tactic worked long enough to barely
reach 10,000 feet, where I was supposed to
break out of the clouds. However, the airplane would not climb farther and I didn't
see the sky. When I confessed my problem
to the controller, he informed me that tops
in that area were now at 13,000 feet.
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2020

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