It never ceases to amaze me how the weather forecasters can get on the television and give us that 7 day forecast with absolute certainty and then immediately bust their projection for the following morning. No matter what they will try to have you think, weather forecasting is not an exact science. And that's why weather is one of the most demanding aspects of our Helicopter Aeromedical business. So for this issue, I thought you might be interested in how we deal with the weather aspect of our operations and how you can help.

When the pilots arrive for their scheduled shift, the first thing we do is make a general check of the current and predicted weather for our service area. We then decide whether we are good to go anywhere, anytime without further checks, or if we have some limitations for the day. Often the pilot will put the program on what we call "Weather Check" status. This means that the dispatchers must call us prior to each flight to verify that we have the weather for a specific flight request before they will scramble us out. Some weather check restrictions we give to the dispatcher might be: for our entire region, or maybe just for the mountains, or only if the request is for a flight outside of our designated "local" area (35 mile radius around Baptist Hospital), or for any specific section of our area that has an existing weather threat that we want to check on a case by case basis.

When the pilots are called for a weather check, we are never told what type of patient we are being requested for. Our decisions are made solely on the safety of the flying conditions, and never the type of patient needing our services. Sometimes we will ask if the request is for a scene run versus a hospital transfer. The reason for this is that scene runs usually require less ground time and if adverse weather is approaching, we can often safely complete a scene run whereas the additional ground time of a hospital transfer may cause us to decline the flight if the weather looks too close.

Sometimes it is confusing to those requesting our services when the weather at their location seems to be good, but we turn the flight down for weather. The causes for this include: (1) we see weather approaching that we believe will cause the flight to be unsafe, (2) the weather in our local area is bad even though it's good where the request is, (3) the weather looks like it will prevent us from getting the patient back to Baptist. When we make our decision to take the flight, we want to be as sure as we can that we can complete the entire trip safely. It does the patient no good if we have to divert half-way home because we can't get into Baptist Hospital, or if we have to turn around enroute to pick them up. This just delays their alternate means of transportation.

So what can you do to help if you are responsible for calling AirCare? First, you can let us make the weather decisions. If the weather looks questionable where you are, don't automatically assume that we can't fly. Always call. Second, if the weather does look questionable where you are, let our dispatchers know when you do call. In many of our outlying areas we can't get weather information. We have radar to tell us where it's raining, but we can't tell if it's foggy. One morning it was beautiful all over and we were called to an MVA scene. We got to within a couple of miles of the location when we found ourselves on top of a complete fog bank and couldn't see the ground. It was only then that the first responder said on the radio that he could only see the bottom 2/3's of a cell phone tower, and the tower was only 200 feet high! We had to turn around.

The third and final thing to keep in mind is that the weather is fickle. The "experts" who are paid the big bucks to do nothing but forecast can't get it right. So we have to take up the slack and do the best we can to assure a safe and total completion of the mission. Sometimes we miss it, too. We will turn down flights on occasion that might have been able to be completed. We will turn back while enroute to your location when we thought we could make it, but the conditions worsened. We want our go/no-go decision errors to be on the side of safety and out of respect for the number one killer in aviation, namely weather.