Who Does the Coach Call? Lessons from a Cross-Border Ferry Flight

A 100 NM ferry flight, an unfamiliar Cessna 182, a closing weather window and a sunset that wouldn't move. Notes from a day that tested every decision-making rule I teach.

Yesterday I was hired to ferry a Cessna 182 from the Lower Mainland to Seattle. The aircraft was Canadian-registered and had been bought by an American buyer in Oklahoma, who needed a Canadian pilot to fly the portion in Canadian airspace. The plan was simple: the buyer's pilot would fly to Seattle, I would meet him there, and I would hand over the aircraft.

It's only 100 NM down the coast. How hard could it be?

As it turned out, the day put every part of my decision-making to the test. I'll use the PARE model (Pilot, Aircraft, EnviRonment, External Pressures) to walk through it.

Pilot

I was rested and held all the required licences. I have plenty of experience across different aircraft types, configurations and levels of equipment. I have completed dozens of similar ferry flights over the years, many of them far more complex than this one. I earned my Instrument Rating 24 years ago, before GPS was an IFR tool. I have over 6,000 hours, I'm an instructor at the airline I fly for, and I provide in-aircraft instruction and coaching for owners with a focus on decision making, advanced IFR operations and systems management.

On paper, the pilot side of the ledger was not the concern.

Aircraft

The aircraft was a C182 I had never flown, and a review of the logbooks showed it had flown only twice in the past year. It was equipped with basic instruments, a VOR/ILS, a LOC receiver and an ADF, plus an outdated VFR-only GPS. No IFR GPS, no moving map and no autopilot.

Environment

A wet system was moving through the Pacific Northwest (or the Pacific Southwest, depending on which side of the border you're on). The morning brought rain and low IFR conditions everywhere, so the launch decision was pushed to the afternoon. The forecast called for a drying trend through the afternoon and evening. Sunset was at 18:52 local. As the rain passed, it left behind low ceilings and marginal visibility.

External pressures

I had told the client the aircraft would be delivered to Seattle, with Bellingham as the backup. He had flown his pilot to Seattle, where he was patiently waiting for me. As pilots we are mission-oriented. We want to deliver on what we said we would do.

I kept the client updated all day and never left the decision to him. Every time, his response was the same: “Thanks, stay safe!” That is the best kind of client to have, and it still didn't remove the pressure I was putting on myself.

Personal minimums

I am a strong advocate for personal minimums: a set of rules you establish before a decision needs to be made. They aren't absolute, but they give you a baseline to fall back on. If you deviate from them, the deviation needs to be justified and mitigated.

Two of my general rules were in play on this trip:

1. I prefer not to fly an aircraft I'm unfamiliar with in IFR conditions for the first couple of legs.
2. I don't fly an aircraft I'm unfamiliar with at night.

The idea is to stack the deck in my favour and leave room to deal with abnormal situations and unknowns.

What actually happened

The morning weather looked poor. I watched it for a few hours, then called the client and his pilot to say the flight was scrubbed for the day and we would look again the next morning.

The aircraft was an hour's drive from home, so I went out to see it anyway. I wanted to do a walk-around, run it up and fuel it so there would be no surprises the next morning. I brought my flight bag and a change of clothes, just in case.

Once I was at the airport watching the radar and forecast, it looked like a break would open up around 1600. That would make a VFR flight to Bellingham possible, with ceilings around 1,400 ft and 5 SM visibility. Getting the aircraft to Bellingham would meet the primary objective, which was to import it into the United States. I called the pilot, who had just landed in Seattle from Oklahoma, and told him not to book a hotel and to stand by.

Plan A was still to get to Seattle VFR if conditions allowed. Plan B was to land in Bellingham, rent a car, drive to Seattle and bring the American ferry pilot back to the aircraft.

Around 1500 the weather improved enough for a short VFR flight to Bellingham. The aircraft performed well, and I tested the IFR nav radio on the way in. After a friendly visit with US Customs and Border Protection, I parked the aircraft and went into the FBO to look at the weather for the next leg. The pilot in Seattle told me he had rented a car and was going to spend the wait at the Museum of Flight.

The last leg

Bellingham was now marginal VFR. Seattle was “easy IFR.” In between, conditions were low IFR, with visibility under a mile and ceilings below 500 ft. At the departure and arrival airports the bases were between 900 and 2,000 ft, with tops reported at 3,000 ft.

Despite more than 25 years of experience and thousands of hours, I found myself wrestling with my own rules. I could complete the last leg IFR without much difficulty, but it would break my unfamiliar-aircraft rule, made worse by an aircraft with only the bare minimum IFR equipment. The second rule was a hard line: I would not do it at night.

On paper, this was the same equipment I earned my Instrument Rating on. The analog panel wasn't what worried me. It was flying an airframe I didn't know, one that had barely flown in a year, in low IFR with no autopilot to share the load.

I paced around the FBO trying to work out whether I was justifying a bad decision or being overly cautious.

Walking through the FBO, I noticed a flight instructor and a student preparing for an IFR lesson. I put my head in and asked if I could run something by them, explaining that I find another perspective valuable.

No amount of experience makes you too senior to ask for a second opinion. If anything, the more hours you have, the easier it is to talk yourself into something, and the easier it is to let pride keep you from asking. A fresh set of eyes costs nothing, and it doesn't have to come from someone with more experience than you.

I laid out the details. The instructor, Michael Connolly, is also an airline pilot, and he took a threat and error management approach: identify each threat, then discuss the mitigation for each. It's exactly what we do at work, and it felt very familiar.

If you fly in the Bellingham or greater Seattle area and are looking for instrument training, a flight review or an IPC, Michael runs Connolly Aviation out of KBLI. Based on how he worked through my decision with me, he is well worth a call.

The student went a different way: “If you're trying to convince yourself, then it's probably a no.” I was impressed. She will go far.

I left the briefing room without committing either way, but with more to consider. I decided to wait 30 minutes for the next METAR. If it held steady or improved, I would trust my abilities, training and mitigations and go. If it deteriorated, I would call it a day, because that would be the last report that still allowed the flight to finish before dark.

Lined up and holding

The 1700 weather came out and held steady, although the band of moisture was moving toward my destination. I filed IFR, set up the aircraft and pre-briefed everything for a fully analog flight. I received my clearance and taxied out.

As I lined up for departure, the tower advised that Seattle had gone into a full ground stop. The weather had deteriorated, and the stop would last about an hour.

An hour's delay put the arrival after sunset. Flying an unfamiliar aircraft IFR at night was my hard stop, so that was the end of the road. I taxied back to the FBO, tied the aircraft down and called the client and his pilot. The pilot drove two and a half hours to Bellingham and collected the aircraft the next morning.

The part nobody talks about

Before I left, I took one last photo of the aircraft tied down on the ramp. The sky over Bellingham had turned blue. Seattle, meanwhile, had dropped to a mile in rain with a 600 ft ceiling. A few miles made all the difference.

Sitting in the back of an Uber to the border, and then from the border to my truck at Boundary Bay, I watched the sun go down and checked the weather. Sure enough, a little later the destination had improved to MVFR.

I was disappointed, and I knew it was illogical. It “could have worked” if I had waited longer. This is a trap I have coached pilots through for years: trust your ability, but also trust your gut and the information you have, and stay confident in a well-reasoned decision. Knowing all of that didn't make it any easier.

With a client, in an aircraft that was a known quantity, those conditions would have been perfect IFR training weather and well within my experience. That is exactly why the rules exist. The same weather in an unfamiliar airframe with minimal equipment, a closing window and a setting sun is a different flight.

So how do I process it? By writing it down for others to read, and hopefully learn from. Most of all, I want other pilots to know they aren't alone when it comes to the tough calls. Experience doesn't make them go away. It just gives you better tools for making them.

Set your own minimums before the day you need them

My rules held up yesterday because I wrote them before I needed them. If you haven't built your own set yet, the Cardinal Aviation Personal Minimums Tool helps you build them, so the hard calls start from a line you drew on a calm day.

You'll find more tools for pilots on the Cardinal Aviation pilot resources page.