Thank you @pilotrobbie to show others how you reacted in such a situation.
You seem to have a great airplane, the AP definitely helped when making your decision. You clearly have the skills, the experience comes with errors 
You were very good at staying humble with your skills and capabilities.
It is also very useful to know the UK ATC system better.
Lessons learned :
Action plan :
PS : your flight reminds me of @Joe-fbs report from Rotterdam to Turweston
On board weather is a must. If I were you, I would order first thing tomorrow a UAT receiver to get weather in the SW UK on your favorite EFB. The only solution I know would be to fly small hops and update your weather data at each stop. Like Dinard to Cherbourg, then Southampton ….. Tedious I know
That is an interesting one – maybe you have a particular interest.
I think on board weather is a great idea – as is weather radar or a strike finder – but “is a must” might be a stretch. It does depend on whether you are regularly flying in convective weather and expecting low bases in which case it may well be a must, but I think for most pilots who avoid these conditions when just the bases become an issue obtaining weather in just the way the poster did is more than adequate for tactical needs. Personally I would have requestd the weather for the airports that interested me, and asked whether there was an obvious trend, and made a decision on that basis. Usually unless the flight is especially long the weather is unlikely to change signifcantly in a short period and as much as it might improve a little, it might deteriorate a little. It seems to me whatever your personal minima if the weather is close to that and if you have enough fuel to divert to somewhere that is well above your personal minima by all means have a look, but if not, call for the diversion and dont waste time.
pilotrobbie wrote:
In-depth video with unseen footage of single pilot decision making on an international flight from Dinard, France to Stapleford, UK.
Thank you, very interesting when one observes the human, the practical, side of decision making process and the factors that can affect it.
I’m not sure if this is about desision making or if it’s about planning and priorities. Safety of passengers vs comfort of passengers etc.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
That is an interesting one – maybe you have a particular interest.
No I don’t. I’m an engineer for an aerospace group and somewhat active renter pilot who tries to make use/have fun of his plain PPL.
But when watching the video, I tought “what would I give in this situation to have radar, METARs/TAFs and winds on my Ipad to choose quietly my new course of action ??”.
Imagine
And so on …
According to this post, inflight weather has a positive impact on safety. Maybe even on dispatch rate but that we’ll never know.
Jujupilote – I think you are absolutely right, in many ways the more information the better. However, I guess my point was that it is not essential. More often than not if the weather is poor you find very few flying (if any). I bet London Info had almost no business at the time we watched. Also, as I commented earlier, although there can be a temptation to keep on asking for METARs in the hope they have improved, it is usually unnecessary. On the whole (I know not always) really low bases come with stagnant air and changes are therefore slow. However, you are right, in an ideal world having weather in the aircraft must be a good thing.
In the end this was a combination of many things. Planning was obviously not ideal and the pilot was too much affected by his passenger. Not ideal to have launched given pilot preference/need for well above IR minimum weather.
In flight weather can be useful but in someways I get the impression he needed to talk to someone.
My focus was the obvious mental back and forward that all of these factors contributed to. We have all been there to one extent or the other.
But @Fuji_Abound is right that constantly asking for updated METARs was more a symptom of the problem than a way to solve it. Where there was no evidence of any positive trendis it meant the pilot is asking out of hope, not really for the actual info which he knew would still be bad. if, for example, you needed a particular vis figure to attempt the approach, regular updates can make sense. But that was not relevant here.
Jujupilote wrote:
Thank you @pilotrobbie to show others how you reacted in such a situation.
You seem to have a great airplane, the AP definitely helped when making your decision. You clearly have the skills, the experience comes with errors You were very good at staying humble with your skills and capabilities.
It is also very useful to know the UK ATC system better.
Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the time it has taken to get back to this thread. Life had a different journey after this event that was more important than flying.
1) I flew to Dinard knowing full well that the weather the weekend into the early part of next week might throw up a few hiccups to our plans. We all departed Stapleford knowing that we could get stuck, but that we would make every reasonable effort to get home. It was obvious that the quickest way back for my passengers was to wait it out, the problem though was explaining why we could fly all the way here with no issues but have an issue flying back.
2) I spoke with a reliable FI/Examiner and he recommended flying along the coast to Le Torquet and waiting it out there, at least then it’s easier for my passengers to get back to London via a road/rail method. I elected not to fly due to the weather situation and how marginal it was. The decision not to fly was after telling my passengers the bad news, that a flight along the French coast with CB’s floating around wasn’t my type of thing due to a previously bad experience with CBs.
It would have made no difference as the weather in the UK was crap, and continued for a few days after. A friend who had flown in Saturday flew up to Jersey that Monday and told me the weather wasn’t particularly great and was closing back in just after I decided to scrap the VFR scud run to LFAT.
I cleared my head for the flight the next day.
3) Tuesday came and the TAF’s were acceptable for me, the only problem is by the time I had departed. The TAF’s had changed. I didn’t want to risk any flights near CBs and the potential for embedded stuff later in the UK. I have previous experience with frontal weather not moving, I should have learned from this experience.
4) My home base airport has no IAP. My alternate did, but I had never flown down to minima in full IMC conditions before – I took passenger comfort into consideration and safety for this one.
5) I took a huge amount of time deciding because I wasn’t sure I was confident to fly an approach down to minima, that’s why I choose Bournemouth over Southend and finally Southampton over Bournemouth; despite the later being a familiar airport for me.
6) In reality I should have also diverted when the communication issues cropped up on contacting en-route French ATC. It probably wasn’t sensible electing for a water crossing with that, but it seemed to be a French ATC issue rather than aircraft specific as I had no issues with Channel Islands/UK ATC. This probably unsettled me a little.
7) Then there was choosing a routing that would keep me VMC and outside of Class A airspace in France. There was lots of cloud that I avoided to remain legal, this was challenging but nothing too considerable. But with point 6) in mind, maybe then I should have just binned the flight and diverted to Le Torquet for a breather. This flight would have been more practical with a full IR, as it gives me much more options legally.
8) London Info really was a confidence boost. But I think the outbound controllers in France were amazingly efficient, so doubt I would have had any issues? But maybe I’ve not heard the horror stories.
9) I agree with regards to on-board weather, when I’ve flown in the flight deck on the observer seat of a commercial airliner. It’s interesting how helpful that radar return can be. Although it has it’s limitations. But yes METAR/TAF and precipitation data would be great.
10) This is what my FI/Examiner suggested I do; should have gone with that. But the added pressure was the customs 24 hours before departure at Dinard. It made things a little bit more complicated as you have to give notice of your intentions and saying I am going to Stapleford, only to land at Cherbourg/Le Torquet then onto the UK I am sure would have confused the heck out of the French Authorities.
Lessons learned -
I agree with the lessons learned; but there’s more to it. The fact they’ll never fly again is the fact my decision making took too long. This didn’t give them confidence, flying in IMC straight after probably wasn’t helpful. I think the delay of 24 hours, the radio issues, the diversion decision making and flying into IMC really wasn’t going to help my case when on terra firma. The final straw was the waiting around in Southampton for a break to fly back to Stapleford and the interrogation from border control.
I can’t blame them, but then I did explain the risks multiple times in the months leading up to this trip.
I need to use the IMCr more often, and also need to look at getting the full IR. All in all it will help boost my confidence which my passengers and FI/Examiner says I lacked. Obviously this isn’t a ticket to take more risks, but to actually be more prepared for what could happen when things go for a turn for the worst.
The action plan is definitely to fly more, post my experiences and become a far better safer pilot.
JasonC wrote:
In the end this was a combination of many things. Planning was obviously not ideal and the pilot was too much affected by his passenger. Not ideal to have launched given pilot preference/need for well above IR minimum weather.In flight weather can be useful but in someways I get the impression he needed to talk to someone.
My focus was the obvious mental back and forward that all of these factors contributed to. We have all been there to one extent or the other.
But @Fuji_Abound is right that constantly asking for updated METARs was more a symptom of the problem than a way to solve it. Where there was no evidence of any positive trendis it meant the pilot is asking out of hope, not really for the actual info which he knew would still be bad. if, for example, you needed a particular vis figure to attempt the approach, regular updates can make sense. But that was not relevant here.
Some of the key errors that I made was allowing my passengers to make any input onto the flying side of things. More on that above. The decision to launch was that there was a window to get my passengers home. Unfortunately this window dissipated as quick as the flight to London was.
Lessons learned for sure.
pilotrobbie wrote:
I need to use the IMCr more often, and also need to look at getting the full IR
Just curious, what could have changed in the trip if you had a full IR instead of IMCr?
Confidence-wise probably, yes but I am not sure if having more minima would help
Certainly, an IR could have opened more diversion options in France (but you can do that on IMCr anyway in emergency)
The core of the problem, IMHO is that we don’t train that much on flying the approach in the diversion airport (probably we should train there more than in what your do in your home airfield…)
pilotrobbie wrote:
But the added pressure was the customs 24 hours before departure at Dinard. It made things a little bit more complicated as you have to give notice of your intentions and saying I am going to Stapleford, only to land at Cherbourg/Le Torquet then onto the UK I am sure would have confused the heck out of the French Authorities.
I wouldn’t worry at all about this. It’s not like you pass customs and then you have to “bugger out” of the country. If you landed at another french airfield, you’ve just been through customs limitations for nothing, and that’s it. The only real annoyance is you’d have to clear customs again from your other departure (which at Le Touquet wouldn’t have been an issue since they’re there all the time)
In addition to much of what have been said here, having preset minimas you adhere to would likely have helped, as you’d have been able to make decisions much faster.
I find having a think about eventualities before the flight (in addition to during, when there is a quiet moment) and what courses of actions to take helps a lot to make fast decisions.
On longer night flights, for instance, I set “checkpoints” along the route where a diversion (to a pre-chosen airport, I’ve surveyed the airports along the route with lights + fuel) is to be made if some conditions are not met.
For instance, from EGMC Southend to LFLY Lyon in the DA40 at night (winter) with headwind:
“If I haven’t managed to climb to FL160 by Lille and Forecast at destination + alternates indicates that no instrument approach will be required, , and I don’t have >= 1h15 FOB on arrival, I will divert to Lille, refuel, and reassess”
Then I would have a simliar checkpoints along the route. I set them stricter at the start and easing in the beggining, so that there is a correction to made, it’s made early. Obviously, towards the end, there is less and less uncertainty about your arrival so you need less “insurance”
I had a “similar” flight to what you did – left Dinard to EGSX (in a DA40) with very strong forecast winds, but I did play the flight a couple of times and had a few scenarios played out, and in the end a diversion had to be made to Southend, but given the preplanning there was little hesitation and the 3 passengers (whose first flight it was, some fairly anxious about it), all had no hesitations to fly after that.
The worst memory they have from that flight is Stansted asking us to increase (our already very rapid) rate of descent, and to watch out for a 747 that had just departed (we were in IMC).
Had I had to orbit around the field (or try to bash approaches), while asking ATC to find me a place with less, without a clear and assertive plan of action, they would probably have been spooked for good.
