Ferry Flight Pic of The Day

Sometimes when you get a weather briefing for a flight outside of the United States you have a hard time interpreting the vague and incomplete data.  Sometimes not so much.   Last summer Stu and I stopped in the Turks and Caicos for fuel while delivering a Beech Bonanza from North Carolina down to Brazil.  The FBO had wireless and Stu was able to pull up a satellite image on his i pad.   What we saw was sobering.  Hurricane Katia had sped up and turned west, threatening our intended flight path to St. Martin.  Our choice’s were take off and hope we could sneak around the hurricane and get to St. Martin unscathed, spend the night in the Turks and hope the hurricane didn’t hit the island and destroy the aircraft, or us, or take the advise of Sir Robin and RUN AWAY!  We were responsible for the Bonanza and the prudent thing to do might be to get the plane out of harm’s way.  In the end we decided to go for it, was there ever any doubt?  I made the call based on the fact that we had Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic as escape routs if we found a hurricane in our way.

      The decision being made we blasted off under a VFR flight plan because I didn’t want any delays that might come with filing an IFR flight plan.  The first half of the flight was great, smooth air and great visibility.  But ahead of us we could see the sky getting darker and darker, an ominous sign.  It wasn’t long before we flew into strong rain showers and moderate turbulence, we were hitting the edges of the hurricane and the conditions were getting worse.  Discretion being the better part of valor we altered course over San Juan and hooked around St. Croix to stay clear of the worst of the weather.  Clear of the Hurricane we were treated to a spectacular sunset.Just another day.