A roller coaster in the sky

I have a fear of flying, and have suffered from this all of my adult life, dating back to well before I ever actually got on an airplane for the first time, at age 28 (in 1995). To the best of my ability to recollect, this dates back to the sensational coverage (which would probably seem quaint by contemporary standards of journalism) on local news stations in Chicago (where I lived from 1975 to 1995) of the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 after taking off from O'Hare airport in 1979; this is still the deadliest single-aircraft accident in US history, with 273 people losing their lives. I still remember Jim Tilmon, one of the on-air meteorologists in Chicago (probably with the NBC affiliate at the time), who also happened to be a commercial pilot, describing the accident to the anchors, turning a model plane on its side (see the picture above) to demonstrate how the plane crashed when its left wing stalled after a series of mechanical and structural failures occurred following the loss of the left-wing engine during takeoff. Horrible shit.

Anyhow, despite my fear, I have managed to take many dozens of trips by airplanes (totaling over 100 flights) in the past 12 years, even getting to Europe three times. My fear has its peaks and valleys. It has been lowest when I've had what might be considered flooding therapy, such as when I took five or six trips within two months in late winter 2001. It's also low when it's looked like I might not be able to get home, such as one night at O'Hare when I missed my connecting flight to Northwest Arkansas (XNA), but managed to get re-booked from American to United (or vice versa), ran through the airport to find my gate, and got on board just before they closed the door. I was too happy to be on board and headed home to see my girlfriend Cari to focus on my usual fears.

My fears tend to shift over time, and now are firstly focused on weather, and secondly on the tight turns and close-to-the-ground turbulence from wind that sometimes accompany landings. At other times, I've not liked takeoff, and clear-air turbulence bothered me. Then there are the noise changes associated with the engines. Et cetera. If it's part of the typical basket of fears associated with flying, I've sampled it and found it to my liking at one time or another. But nowadays it's weather first and foremost, because I've been pretty lucky to avoid flying in crappy weather. I felt like I was due to cash in on some perversion of the Gambler's Fallacy. It turned out I was right.

Yesterday (30 Sept) I was in State College, PA, on the last day of a weekend visiting Cari. My flights back were from State College to Cincinnati (CVG), and then from CVG to XNA. I knew from a few days earlier that the weather forecast included a slight chance of thunderstorms in northwest Arkansas. However, the forecast discussion (the National Weather Service publishes these for weather geeks) as of Saturday (29 Sept) morning said "NOT OVERLY IMPRESSED WITH RAIN CHANCES SUNDAY INTO MONDAY." A later discussion sounded similar skepticism about there being enough moisture to induce much action.

Before heading to the airport late yesterday afternoon, I took one last look at the weather forecast and saw that the NWS had issued a severe thunderstorm watch for northeast Oklahoma and northwest Arkansas, among other locations. Also, a line of thunderstorms had developed that extended from central Missouri down into north central Oklahoma. I didn't have time to look at animated radar images and thus to do the mental calculations needed to figure out when these would get into northwest Arkansas. So I got on the plane in Cincinnati knowing that it was possible that my second flight would be less-than-smooth.

The first flight was remarkably smooth, which, in hindsight, is no consolation at all. Once in the terminal in Cincinnati, I checked the northwest Arkansas radar on my cell phone and the storms had clearly intensified and extended west to about Tulsa, and still had yet to arrive at XNA. Desperately trying to do mental calculations to figure out when we'd arrive and when the storms would arrive, I thought that the flight path would have to either cross the storms or go around them (via Tulsa).

Before taking off from CVG, one of the pilots told us that it would be a smooth flight, but that it was overcast in northwest Arkansas. Other than that, he didn't say anything about the weather. We took off early, which I believe (in hindsight) was an effort to beat the storms to XNA. The first 75% of the flight was smooth, although very shortly after takeoff I could see flashes of lightning to the right (northwest), although for a while they were pretty distant. The flight path (at right) paralleled where the line of storms was. As we got to 120 miles out from XNA, one of the pilots said that because of the storms the ride might get bumpy, and so he turned on the seat belt sign. Other than that, he gave no indication that we were being delayed or diverted. There was a lot of lightning off to the right, but it was still reasonably smooth riding. Eventually, because of a series of small turns, I lost my mental compass and didn't know which way we were headed (in particular, whether we'd fly in from the north or the south; XNA has a 16/34 runway) as we descended and got closer to XNA. The next announcement was to get the flight attendant to prepare for arrival, and to let us know that there was "weather north of the field". This meant that the storms had yet to arrive, as they were traveling NW to SE. The descent wasn't too bumpy, but we were clearly getting closer to the "weather". We finally made a couple of right turns, I heard the landing gear drop, and I could see the runway not too far off. Visibility looked good, and any rain that was falling seemed light at worst.

What I didn't know was that just as we had made the last turn to line up with the runway, the outflow boundary from the storms was hitting XNA. According to my watch, we lined up with the runway at about 9:18 p.m. According to the Weather Underground history for XNA for yesterday, the wind and rain started at the airport at 9:16. This was not the main storm just yet, but its gust front (see the outflow front at right). These gust fronts are a product of the downdraft of air that is associated with thunderstorms, which is usually experienced as an often-cool, rain-smelling breeze a few minutes before a thunderstorm arrives. These are very dangerous for aircraft when they are on a large or strong scale; the Wikipedia lists several airplane crashes that are attributed to strong downdrafts called microbursts.

So we were lined up to land, and descending toward the airport, unaware precisely of the weather ahead of us. As we came down over the airport access road (probably about a mile or less from the runway), low enough to read license plates and the like, the engines roared up, the landing gear retracted, and we started ascending and turning right, hard, to turn away from the oncoming storm. This sent us up into the gust front, and into the leading edge of the storm. The image at right is from about 25 minutes after the aborted landing; XNA is near the white dot. I've never before experienced turbulence like that. It was crazier than being on a roller coaster, because the motion and bumps were in all possible directions. It was terrifying and thrilling. No one on board screamed or anything (at least not that I noticed, although I was pretty focused on myself, frankly), but there was a lot of commotion as the plane turned away from the storm, ascended rapidly, and pulled away from XNA. I think that we were out of the storm pretty quickly, but because it was cloudy, the flashing lights on the wings made it seem like there was a lot of lightning nearby, adding to the creepy effect. And there were several more minutes of serious turbulence, probably associated with the smaller storm cells southeast of the main line of storms.

We later learned that the pilot aborted landing because cockpit instrumentation indicated wind shear near the runway and that FAA rules (and quite possibly common sense) prohibit landing under the particular conditions we encountered. Given the number of accidents that have occurred because of attempted landings in such conditions, it was obviously the right thing to do, but I did not want to go around for another landing attempt, which is what I thought we were doing at first. (In December, 2003, I was on a flight that made three landing attempts at XNA on a snowy day, and each time we gave up, only to fly to Kansas City to get fuel and wait out the snow.) But we did not go around. Instead, we were told that we were headed to Little Rock to refuel, get a new flight plan approved, and to wait out the weather.

The flight to Little Rock was smooth after we pulled away from the storm. I was a nervous wreck, though, and very thirsty, having sweated for a long time, and not taken that extra bottle of water the flight attendant had offered when things were peaceful. D'oh! When we landed (around 9:45), we sat out on the tarmac while we got refueled. We weren't allowed off the plane (who knows what kind of arcane rules govern this sort of thing), and so there was a rush on the bathroom, which pretty soon became a separate source of discomfort, this of the smelly variety. After calling Cari and swearing that if they let me off the plane I'd rent a car and drive home, I checked the radar again and saw that there was a solid line of storms between Little Rock and Fayetteville. I dreaded hearing the captain tell us that we were going any time soon, because any direct path would have to go right through the storms.

Finally, around 10:30, the captain got back on board and said that we'd soon be leaving, and that we'd be making an end-run around the storms by flying west toward Oklahoma, and then coming in behind the line of storms. He told us that it would be about a 42-minute flight, but it took 53 minutes (but who's counting?!). And we really did fly around the storm, which was enormous and beautiful. It was lit up by lightning every few seconds as we flew first south and then north of it. (Unfortunately, my camera was in the overhead compartment, and I was plastered to my seat for the duration. But it was night, and I doubt I'd have gotten good images. I keep telling myself this.) The image above (courtesy of Flight Aware) depicts our path (along with the radar image from about 30 minutes after we got back to XNA). We went about as far west as Tulsa before turning back to Arkansas. If you look closely, you can see the little loop we did to land at XNA, which seemed gratuitous to me, but I'm now more convinced than ever that pilots know exactly what they're doing, and that even in the worst weather, if you land and walk away, it was a good flight. I feel ready to take on just about anything next time I get on a plane, which will be 11 days from today. It's too early to get a good read on what the weather will be like, but I'll be looking soon enough.

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