Having put in a few extra hours of work on my new project over the weekend, I gave myself a morning off today to refresh those flying skills that atrophy after 12 days' break. It turned into a real workout that ended with an unexpected landing at Pearson International.

IFR training flights are generally scheduled in weather such that a budding student pilot gets exposed to as bad conditions as they can handle at the intermediate approach airports, and yet need an almost certain return to home base. Luckily for students in the Toronto area, one can generally fly toward the higher terrain to the west, such as Hamilton, London, Kitchener/Waterloo, and toy with some bad weather, where the bad weather can be localized. This way, the flight can end on a relatively relaxed note, and the airplane (if a rental) can be available for the next guy.

With real purposeful cross-country flights, one decides whether to go or not primarily based on the destination weather. Conditions at one’s point of origin are not too important, except as an emergency-return consideration.

My personal training flights are somewhere in between. With a private airplane, the precise point where the airplane eventually ends up is not going to inconvenience others, only myself. Operating out of the Island Airport is complicated by the fact that the only bad-weather instrument approaches are relatively conservative (one is not permitted to fly too low or close to the airport, before having to catch sight of it), so anything worse than “medium-bad” signals bad news for landing here.

So, in order to conduct a comfortable training flight out of the island, weather by the Toronto lakeshore has to be no worse than “medium-bad”; but not too far to the west or north, “bad” weather should be available for training purposes. Such conditions occur dozens of days a year.

And then there are days like today. A frontal system was sweeping through Ohio / Ontario, and detailed forecasts estimated its snow’s arrival into Toronto around 1:30PM, just late enough to let me sneak back home in time. Its intensity (visibility obscuration) was forecast as being only “medium-bad”, in the sense that landing back home in such conditions is possible, just barely.

Unfortunately, the forecasts were optimistic. Barely 30 minutes into my 2-hour refresher flight, conditions back home turned lousy. I did not know that at the time, because I kept myself fully occupied just doing the practice approaches and didn’t make time to receive updated weather. To avoid trouble, I would have had to hear about the sudden arrival of the bad stuff well before I did even my first exercise, and turned back real fast.

As it happened, I completed ¾ of what I intended to cover, cut the trip short, and headed home. During the leg of the trip from St. Catharines to Toronto, passing over this corner of Lake Ontario, I heard three other airplanes on frequency, about to arrive into the Island. Alarmingly, the automated weather broadcast said “conditions are changing rapidly, contact [the control] tower”. That’s an indication of sudden bad stuff. Sure enough, I heard each of those airplanes make an attempt at the approach, and each of them had to “miss” and go somewhere else.

I was in a holding pattern at the time, waiting for my turn. I kept busy by flipping through the maps and charts to find a good alternative plan. While I had filed what was once a legal alternate (backup airport, with acceptable weather then forecast), the early arrival of worse weather rendered that a moot point: it was not a safe bet any more. I was not going to piss around and give it a try, just in case the snow stops for ninety crucial seconds, nor let hopeful cockiness go beyond the legal bounds set by the approach charts. Instead I asked the controllers to send me straight to Pearson International, the best chance to land anywhere in the province. This airport has five separate runways, good precision navigation equipment and ground support machinery, that makes it a good last resort.

The controllers were great, squeezing several of us little guys into the queue of jets coming and going. This was challenging because it suddenly impacted multiple airplanes concurrently, and because they had their own problems on the ground. Runway lights were going on and off, snow plows were dispatched then undispatched; inbound airplanes were told to switch several times between different runways. This is a big deal for big jets, as they usually line up with their assigned runway twenty miles away, and don’t like to change anything in the last few minutes.

By some coincidence, Charlie Rampulla was in one of the other island-bound airplanes, and goofed around with his old controller buddies on the radio, like he always does. Hm, he called me “green” to one particular controller, to explain my few clumsily worded transmissions. I will have to spank him next time we fly together.

Anyway, once on the ground on Pearson, and once I could meander off of the very slippery runway, the rest went smoothly. The snow made it hard to see anything but taxiway signs, but eventually I found the place we used for that Hope Air mission a few weeks ago. With any luck, I’ll fly GXRP back home tomorrow, that is, unless the weather beats forecasts all black and blue (but mostly white) again.

UPDATE: It took an extra day, but GXRP is home. The Pearson detour cost a handsome bundle (48 hours’ hangarage charged as “3 days”, two hours’ fuel, ramp fee) was $700, and I’m expecting another bill yet. On the other hand, I had a spectacular take-off during Pearson’s busy period this morning. The controllers asked me to stay low and turn after my westbound take-off, directly crossing over the airport north to south. I flew just barely above and between the airport towers, terminals, and got a look at a dozen slumbering jets moving to or fro. I landed at the island ten minutes later.