Geoff Murray: When you're flying in restricted visibility, you're paying close attention, you're briefing everything in detail, and within literally a split second, you're executing what's called a missed approach, effectively abandoning that approach, heading out to a holding pattern. Flying to another airport and during that period of time, the flying typically tends to be pretty normal. It feels normal. You can't see out the window, but until that last minute, you just don't know whether you're going to get to the destination or not.

Daniel: Welcome to the no entry podcast presented by KnowDelay.

Doug Cameron: Hi and welcome To the no entry podcast where we take you behind the cockpit door to make that travel experience just a little bit more stressful. I'm Doug Cameron. I've been an aviation journalist for the best part of 40 years, but more importantly, I've been a passenger for 45 years. That's my only qualification to help you and to help me get through that travel journey. I'm joined by Geoff Murray and Noah Malone, both longtime pilots. Geoff, where have you been recently?

Geoff Murray: So where have I been recently? Well, I'm heading to LaGuardia this afternoon. Uh, like Noam, I was in Toronto the other day.
I was out in Monterey, Mexico a few days ago. I've been a pilot for, uh, almost 40 years, an airline pilot for about 20 years. Aviation consultant during that period of time also ran the supply chain team for a major U. S. airline, but, uh, flying is my passion and I really enjoy being an airline pilot. I know,

Noam Alon: where have you been?
Just recently, as Geoff mentioned, I was just in Toronto. Been bouncing back and forth between the coasts. I've been an airline pilot for over 25 years and also held a number of management roles for major airline, including running the operations control center where we make all the decisions about cancellations, delays, routing of crews, etc.
So, Doug Cameron: passionate about flying too. Great. Well, we're going to draw on everything both of you know, and in later episodes, we're going to be joined by the guests who are going to tell us what they know, which again, can make everybody's flights just that little bit easier. We're going to start with the big one, weather.
It's probably the biggest source of frustration, the biggest source of uncertainty for passengers. The statistics are there. Three quarters of, uh, delays are down to weather. Now, while most flights are, uh, arrive on time. It's the weather that concerns people and obviously concerns pilots. You're at the front.
So Geoff, you start us off. Everybody wants to know how to try and avoid delays. So what are the big weather delay issues that you as pilots and flight crew So,

Geoff Murray: as you noted, Doug, 75 percent of the flight delays are caused by weather and, and frankly, as a pilot, there are a myriad of variables that we look at that could potentially influence whether a flight is delayed, whether we have to have what's called an alternate, meaning if we can't get to our destination, where else will we fly to if the weather is too bad, but the big ones are, are frankly, fairly obvious.
I mean, it's snowstorms, thundershowers, heavy rain, wind. But as Noam and I will get into later in this podcast and in others, there's also just dozens of variables and parameters that we're looking at constantly that can influence the performance of the aircraft and importantly, the ability for us to get to the destination.
Doug Cameron: Noam, before I leave the house, I'll look out the window, I'll maybe check the weather app for the weather at my destination, I'll get to the airport, I'll get to the gate 45 minutes before. You as a pilot, an hour before the flight, what do you know and which perhaps passengers should bear in mind when they're making their final travel plans, what do you know that passengers should bear in mind as well about potential weather issues and how that might factor into your flight.

Noam Alon: Yeah, weather is really more than just what's happening at your airport where you're departing. There's that, there's also the weather en route, and then there's weather at the destination. And so we take all of that into account. There is a little bit of additional consideration where the airplane that you're going to be flying, where it's coming from, and is there weather at that airport.
And so we take all of that into account before, to make sure that the flight operates on time.

Doug Cameron: Geoff, what's uh, what's the kind of worst weather news that you can get in your pre flight briefing?

Geoff Murray: Boy, there are so many, but I'd say, probably one of the worst is restricted visibility because you can fly in it.
It typically doesn't knock the airplane around the way the winds or thunderstorms or that kind of thing, but when you're flying in a restricted visibility situation, you're paying close attention. to the crew member or the other pilot you're flying with. You're briefing everything in detail you could, you could make a perfect approach to the airport, but the visibility could be limited or the ceiling is too low.
And within literally a split second, You're executing what's called the missed approach. You're, you're effectively abandoning that approach, heading out to a holding pattern, flying to another airport. And during that period of time, I mean, your performance is best. The communication is the best. The flying typically tends to be pretty normal.
It feels normal. You can't see out the window, but until that last minute, you just don't know whether you're going to get to the destination or not.

Doug Cameron: Now Geoff mentioned communication. We're still, uh, we haven't taken off yet in our hypothetical flight. What sort of information do you try to impart to passengers and indeed did your fellow, uh, fellow crew members, but before you take off based on what you know and also your experience of what can change too?

Noam Alon: Yeah, that's a great question. In fact, I mean, this is part of my standard briefing both to the co pilot and to the flight attendants. Try to give as much information as possible to the passengers to let them know what kinds of things we're considering, just like Geoff mentioned. Most often, the weather does not cause a delay, but when it does, I try to be as transparent as possible.
And taking all the considerations that we talked about previously. Now, what can

Doug Cameron: change on route, Geoff? Uh, again, it's unknowns, which probably upset passengers most of, if they know a little bit, if they know it's, it's snowing heavily where they left or it's snowing heavily where, where they're arriving. Uh, what, what could change and how do you monitor it?
And again, how do you try to communicate that to, to passengers?

Geoff Murray: Right. So there's, like we talked about in the beginning, there's a lot of things that can change, I would say, and I presume no one would agree with this, some of the most challenging flying typically is in the summer when you've got thunderstorms and rain showers, because a thunderstorm or rain shower can sit on top of an airport.
It could be five miles from the airport. In both of those instances, it will restrict arrivals and delay aircraft into an airport. So, we're always monitoring the movement of thunderstorms and rain showers in the winter. We're looking at things like, how fast the snow is falling, how much accumulation is there, because even a quarter inch difference in snow accumulation Can can mean an airport operating normally to an airport with restricted or no arrivals.
And we're watching all of that in real time when we're airborne. And then, just like Noam said, before we even depart, when we brief as a crew, we're telling everybody, hey, the snow's falling. If it picks up by a quarter inch, they're going to restrict the arrivals. Our alternate is this airport. So everybody.
is briefed, everybody understands the information that we're working with, and then I'll have Noam talk about how he talks to the passengers, because that tends to be a different conversation.

Doug Cameron: I'd love to hear more about that, Noam. Yeah, how do you, uh, with all these imponderables and changing, a quarter inch of snow can fall up, uh, fall pretty quickly, so a lot of changing variables.
How are you trying to impart that?

Noam Alon: Well, I think, transparency is really the key and weather models have gotten a lot better over the over recent years, but there are still some elements of weather like Geoff talked about thunderstorms in the summer and some of the winter operations like ice pellets.
It's not as Transcribed be simple sometimes as snow or wind, which largely we can figure in a plan and we can communicate that very clearly. It's going to take us 15 minutes to de ice and take us 30 minutes to taxi, whatever it might be. But ice pellets, uh, in the wintertime or thunderstorms in the summertime can create a lot of very dynamic, uh, situations where We can have a fairly clear idea of what we think it's going to be and then the conditions change so quickly and the impact on the operation is pretty significant.
So what I try to do is, in all honesty, is try to be transparent. I share what I know. If we happen to be stuck at the gate for a long time, I'll let passengers come up and ask questions to try to relay what information I have. And then as things change, I do this, I update people on that information.

Doug Cameron: So the weather is obviously dynamic. How does that then feed into Where planes actually fly in the sky, does that change how they're either spaced or that the height that you fly at? How does that change?

Geoff Murray: Oh, it has a, the weather has a big impact on that. I mean, the weather in an airport, weather that restricts arrivals at an airport will always lead to delays because the airport, the air traffic control, Leaders need to make greater separation between aircraft.
So instead of, for example, O'Hare accepting 60 or 80 aircraft an hour, they may have to go down to 30 or 40 an hour, depending on the weather. So the configuration of that weather and the variability Of that weather is really difficult to predict. So just like Noam said, transparent with the passengers say, Hey, there is a chance of a delay.
There is a chance we may need to go to our alternate. Our alternate is this, this airport. And the other thing to keep in mind is unlike flying 10 or 20 years ago is the folks in back. often have similar information to what we have. I mean, I've had passengers when we've diverted, they're like, Hey, I knew we were diverting five minutes before you made the PA because I was watching our ATC monitor on my phone.
So they saw us diverting to Indianapolis when we were supposed to go to O'Hare and that kind of thing. So in many cases, the folks in the back, I mean, while they may not know as much as you, because they don't have all, they know a lot.

Doug Cameron: Got it. And is that. Basically because of safety or is it because of workload or is a mix of the two?
Why, why is, why are the planes spaced out further? And I guess they can also make change, ask you to change your speed as well, I guess.

Noam Alon: Right. I'll share with you. So on a beautiful day with light winds and clear skies, what air traffic controllers do is they allow pilots to maintain separation visually with other airplanes.
And when you do that, you can bring the airplanes in as close as safety allows. How far is that? It's about 30 seconds. It's, it varies by the speed of the airplane, about 30 seconds. If you picture an airport, large, busy airport, and you see all the airplanes stacked up one behind the other, arriving at. In a runway, when you can see as a, as a passenger on the ground, think of those days as the days where the airplanes are most closely put together.

Geoff Murray: Like Noam said, 30 seconds, it's generally three or four miles. Three or four miles before I mean between aircraft that way the aircraft that's following can see the aircraft in front and it enables ATC to effectively hand off that separation to the flight crew versus the ATC versus the ATC folks on the ground.
Right.

Noam Alon: And then once you add weather, now the pilots can't do that visually, so the air traffic controllers have to do that using their instrumentation, their radar. And so by definition, they have to separate the airplanes a little bit further apart. And if you imagine that an airport is filled to capacity in terms of the number of flights, now you start to build delays because longer times between flights means each, the airport can only accept it.
Uh, a certain number per hour, and now it can accept fewer because of that larger separation. You might

Doug Cameron: go from 30 seconds and three or four miles to, to what sort of, what sort of distance and what sort of timing? Yeah, about 45 seconds or five

Noam Alon: miles, something like that. Okay.

Geoff Murray: And, and sometimes more.
Sometimes more sometimes could be 10 miles and really restrictive weather conditions and that kind of thing again with when they're landing on different runways. And we'll talk about that in another podcast is it's way too rich to cover to cover just in one session, but there's a lot of variables.

Doug Cameron: Right. Now, certainly passengers may have been at the gate and heard an announcement that there's a ground stop. Maybe you can explain that and explain what it means to, if your flight hasn't taken off, and what it means if you're en route. So, I'm going

Geoff Murray: to cover that one because you were, uh, when you were running the operation for one airline, you were dealing with those every single

Noam Alon: day. Right. Thanks. Yeah. So, think about this. On any given day, On average, the same number of flights are scheduled every day, right? And the airline, you're buying your ticket as a passenger well before the airline knows, and air traffic control knows what the weather is. But now the weather shows up, and when it surprises air traffic control, let's say it wasn't forecasted, a ground stop is a tool to stop aircraft that are not in the air, stop them on the ground so that the air traffic controllers can manage the airplanes that are already airborne, already sequenced for the airport, and Manage those airplanes while stopping airplanes that would otherwise be scheduled to fly to get airborne that usually turns into something else that you've probably heard about, which is a ground delay program, and that is now we know what the air traffic controls knows what the delay is and basically says, Okay, we can handle X number of airports and they start to assign us a departure time to all the flights that are scheduled for the rest of the day.
And so those are two tools. The ground delay program and the Okay. Uh, ground stopper, two tools air traffic control uses to manage flights in at a metered rate that is less than what is normally scheduled.

Doug Cameron: And who decides when a, a ground delay or a ground stop program comes into force, and for passengers more importantly, when it's lifted and they can, they can hopefully get on their way.

Noam Alon: Yeah, that's the air traffic control system, it's done in combination with the local air traffic controller and the national airspace controllers because you can imagine flights are coming from, depending on the airport, all over the world and so managing all of that traffic, it's a combination of very coordinated effort between air traffic controllers and of course the airlines too.
Can airlines ask

Doug Cameron: to be moved around or appeal or you get your place and you get your place because that's the way it is? Yes.

Noam Alon: I mean, that is literally what I used to do every day. And so what the air traffic control system does is they say, we typically, let's take O'Hare as an example. We typically can handle a hundred flights an hour into the airport, but because of weather now we can only handle 60, we have 60 slots.
Airline A, you are scheduled to have 50 slots. Uh, uh, now because it went from 100 to 60, went down by 40%, you had 50 airplanes. Now you, that goes down to 40%, you can decide which of your flights takes those 50 slots. 40 percent fewer slots. And what happens is, is some flights, maybe an international flight, keeps going because it's already in the air. And the flight that's very close to O'Hare gets cancelled or delayed for a long time. So it's up to the airline to manage with the fewer slots that are provided by ATC.

Geoff Murray: Right. Noam dealt with this every single day in kind of a really thematic rule there. is the regional airlines are disproportionately delayed or canceled.
And the simple reason is, they're not carrying as many passengers. So when Nome was making those decisions, at the top of that food tree were the international flights. They've already departed. They're carrying 300, 400 passengers. Then it was the wide body domestic flights. Then it was the high yield domestic flights.
And at the bottom of that food tree, where guys like me were the regionals and the regionals were disproportionately cancelled or delayed. And the data shows this when there's a weather event. I mean, plain and simple.

Noam Alon: And it's a function, it's a function of the revenue, but it's also a function of alternative means to get people moving, right?
You can, if we're taking, let's say, I don't know, pick an airport, Los Angeles. So if there's a big weather event in Los Angeles and the international flights coming from Japan. There's no alternative, right? So that flight has to operate. But the flight that may have connected from, uh, San Diego, you can get on a bus and drive to L.
A. To catch your flight or you can get in a car. So there are alternatives to that that also are part of the consideration.

Geoff Murray: And speaking of that, and speaking as a regional pilot who literally is, I mean, I was in Moline the other day, Peoria, South Bend, If there is a weather event in Chicago, and I'm sure there's people at my airline that would get mad at me for doing this, myself and the captain will go out, talk to the passengers and say, Hey, we're heading up to Chicago.
Chicago's got rain showers or snow showers or whatever. There's a rental car booth right there, and there's a bus station right there, and you may be better off getting in a car, or getting in a bus, or in some cases getting on a train to get to Chicago. I mean, it's, it's so important to be transparent and to be thinking of these alternatives, but the closer you are to one of these hub airports when you're delayed, the more, when they're operating with delays, the more likely it is that you're going to be delayed.
Plain and simple.

Doug Cameron: Absolutely. Good luck finding a train in the Midwest, or at least more than one. In Milwaukee. This is true. That's true. That's true. You mentioned a few airports there, Geoff, up in Toronto, it snows there. Everyone knows it's foggy in San Francisco. So just in terms of your kind of travel checklist, where are places where it's just more commonplace in terms of weather delays?
And you should be aware of that.

Noam Alon: I think it is partly a seasonal answer to that question in general, you can expect more consistent delays is in the northeast of the U. S. Uh, in particular, the New York airports. There's just so much traffic and so little real estate. Newark in particular is a tough airport.
As you mentioned, San Francisco again seasonally. When there's ground fog over there, uh, that could be difficult. And in the summertime, almost all the large hubs are impacted, but especially in the southeast, in Florida, those airports every day. It's almost like Hogwarts. Yeah.

Geoff Murray: Every day. Literally, I mean, I, for my other job, for my non flying job in consulting, I used to have to go down to Florida fairly regularly.
And I would rarely, if ever, take an afternoon flight down there. Even if I had to kind of rearrange my plans to get on a 6am or 7am flight from O'Hare. down to Florida. I would do that because I was confident I would get there. Whereas going in the afternoon, you get all these, pop up thunderstorms, rain showers, they're impacting arrivals, they're impacting sequencing. I mean, they, they just gum up travel and no one, no one, I monitor this stuff. You see it every single day. day in the afternoon, FAA will publish or delays in Orlando, delays in Miami, delays in Fort Lauderdale, Tampa. I mean, it's, they're just, they're prevalent in the summer months.

Doug Cameron: Yeah, no, I'm definitely a huge fan of the, of the early flight without picking on San Francisco.
It does just make me think of visibility and I've, over the years I've landed and wondered how on earth did we manage to, to land here? Uh, and on other days, uh, when we have landed and we've had been in a holding pattern, why couldn't we, uh, why couldn't we land when the pilots mentioned visibility?
No, maybe you could take us through what the decision on, on when you're, you're able to land because. Are you going to San
Geoff Murray: Francisco tonight?

Noam Alon: I am. I am. Right. Tell us about it. Weather looks good. It's a function of a lot of things. But in addition to the visibility, wind conditions also impact in particular, San Francisco. So when the weather is, you typically land on the runways that point west, westward, the two eights. And when the wind is favorable for those, the airport can typically handle a pretty good volume even with low visibility. It's when you get strong cross winds. So they and they typically come off the bay.
Landing, if they're from the north or from the, uh, from the south, uh, that can cause significant delays when the visibility is, is more restrictive. Uh, but essentially like Geoff indicated, we brief all that up as pilots. We brief, uh, the, the flight attendants and the passengers, we explain what we're going to do.
And in some cases. Even when the visibility is really low, some of the aircraft can do an auto land, which means even in a very low visibility situation, the airplanes can land themselves. It's a very precise procedure that we run, that we train for all the time. And in that case, even with very low visibility, the flights can arrive.
Now, not all aircraft are equipped with that equipment. And so depending on the kind of flight you're on, the kind of aircraft you're on, you may not be able to land when other airplanes are able to land. Okay,

Doug Cameron: so, so after landing, just to wrap up guys, what sort of curve balls can the, can the weather throw after you've actually landed?
Can ice make you have to taxi slower or, I, I guess gates can get gummed up, but yeah. What, what are the kind of curve balls you might find after, after you've landed and which, frankly passengers might get frustrated about, but, but less so if they, if they know what could happen.

Geoff Murray: I'll take that one. There was a couple of those a week ago that we had a really good cold snap here in the Midwest.
And I'm again doing a lot of the flying in and out of the regional airports and some of the larger airports. We had an early morning departure. We were going to a smaller airport. They had the snow, ice, some freezing rain and all that stuff. We touched down, we get to the gate, we get marshalled into the gate.
And the jetway is literally frozen. They can't move the jetway. So they push us off the gate, they bring up some stairs, the folks walk off the aircraft via the stairs, across the ramp, into the, uh, end of the terminal. So, I mean, there are so many things when there's a weather event. I mean, in O'Hare alone, when it's really cold, they have trouble unsealing the basically the fueling. What do you call them, Noam, the fueling hydrants? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's gas. Right, but, and Noam's got more stories from his mainline flying. I mean, a million things that could go wrong.

Noam Alon: In addition to the things Geoff had mentioned, I mean, you could have, it's typically, icing is not so much an arrival issue as much as maybe the airplane that is at the gate that you're going to occupy can't depart because it needs to be de iced, uh, or there might be some other issue with, with that aircraft departing that often is, is the reason your arrival is delayed, uh, into the gate.

Geoff Murray: Let me, I mean, a secondary kind of story to the one where they couldn't get the jetway operating, they hooked up a tug, the ramp was a little bit icy and the tug couldn't push the aircraft back because the wheels were spinning. So they had to move the tug, they had to bring over some. Some salt and some sand and that kind of thing to get the ramp clear so that the tug could push us back because the aircraft is powered by the motors.
It's not like we have little engines driving the wheels and all that stuff. We use the big engines to taxi around on the ground and all that stuff. But yeah, I mean, it could be a million different things that are going to impact

Doug Cameron: your ride. These tug wheels, though, get it going in no time. Okay, well, guys.
Thanks so much for this. This is the No Entry podcast from NoDelay. That's nodelay. com, K N O W, delay, which you can find out weather conditions up to three days before, which will certainly help smooth your travel, the better. So guys, thanks very much and we'll see you next time. Okay, safe travels.
Daniel: Thanks for joining the No Entry podcast. For more information, visit nodelay. com.