Taxiiway Closures

I'm arriving at an airport with no control tower, and no flight services on the field, but it's a mandatory frequency, and this time of day the radio is answered by a flight services specialist at another airport. It's not an uncommon situation in Canada. It's funny sometimes listening when a pilot doesn't realize that the control tower at the airport he has just landed at is unoccupied, and asks questions like, "Is this a good place to park?"

The descent is over rugged forest with little lakes in it. I point out a boat on the lake to a new, non-pilot crew member, part of my running commentary on what I'm doing, so they get to know what is normal. I called the flight services specialist about 30 miles out and then again entering the zone. The specialist tells me that three out of the four taxiways are closed, rattling off the identifying letters. This is the wrong part of the flight for me to be fumbling for a publication to determine how this should affect my runway choice or route to the fuel pumps. Taxiway letters don't correspond in an obvious way to the runway layout. How could they, with so many ways to lay out runways? I do know of an airport with taxiways S to the south and E to the east, but even that makes no sense without the diagram out the CFS, Did I miss this mess in the NOTAMs? I often check NOTAMs the night before and not morning of, and perhaps I missed this airport.

I can see a vehicle parked across one of the taxiways.  Another pilot on frequency says somethign about "these baldies."  Bald eagles, he means. They're the most common kind of eagle around here. I was about to describe one, but guess everyone in the world knows what they look like, because they're an American symbol. There's one near my altitude, but fortunately not right in my path. I flare, and no eagles decide to challenge me.

I tax off the runway and negotiate my way to the apron. There is construction going on, and large trucks trundling to and fro. We get to the fuel pumps without incident and refuel. At the end of the day I recheck NOTAMs. There is nothing for this airport about taxiway closures, just three unlighted towers and some non-standard runway markings. Ubiquitous enough NOTAMs that I hadn't written them down.

I call to talk to a flight briefer to see if I've missed a NOTAM somewhere. Nope, they don't have anything either. I tell them about the construction.

This sort of thing undermines my confidence in the system. I depend on this system to tell me if there is fuel and a place to put my wheels when I land. I check NOTAMs again in the morning. Now there are two unlighted towers plus non-standard runway markings. Overnight someone either put up some lights or took down a tower, I guess. But the construction still doesn't exist.

By the Numbers

I'm descending out of the flight levels on a sunny day. The airspace I'm descending through is green on the IFR chart, meaning that it's uncontrolled even above FL180, so I have been working with only a company flight itinerary, no IFR flight plan, just me and the company flight follower.The sky is littered with little puffy clouds, based around ten thousand feet, but the scenery is clearly visible below. I can see a ridge of trees, a long lake with a river at each end, a little settlement, and a runway parallel to the lake. It's just as the CFS and sectional say it should be.

I advise traffic of my presence and intentions on 126.7 and on the aerodrome frequency, but there doesn't seem to be anyone around. Through ten thousand feet, oxygen selected off. My oxygen mask is on underneath my headset so I can't take it off without taking off my headset, and that will also knock my glasses off, so for now I'll just plummet, breathing now the ambient air that sucks into the mask. Altitude falling, temperature rising, runway coming into view. I glance again at the diagram I've scribbled on my kneeboard to remember the runway numbers and the location of the exit taxiway. I advise traffic I'll be downwind for my chosen runway, and I join the circuit, a thousand feet above runway elevation, parallelling the runway just far enough away to see it by my wingtip. Flap speed, approach flap set. Abeam the touchdown point, gear speed, gear selected down. Three green lights, turn base, continue descent and increase flap to one half. Turn final, roll out. I can see the runway straight ahead, a sawmill underneath and the lake beside me. I call final to the traffic that isn't there to hear me, and add the last increment of flaps, letting the speed bleed back to blueline and then below as I ease over the threshold and ...

What? The runway number is not the one in the publication. It's not the opposite end either, nor is it freshly painted. I haven't been here in many years, so don't remember the airport layout, but there's no way I'm not at the right airport. I let the main wheels clump onto the runway and then lower the nose for the rollout. I have to backtrack to exit, so I have opportunity to see again. No, this is definitely not the runway number that appears in the book.

After shutdown I look at the CFS again. Yup, I have the right airport. I recheck the date on the CFS, even though I know when all my pubs expire and this set is fine. Yup, the CFS is current. I pull up NOTAMs on my phone, looking for the one I must have missed. Nothing for this airport at all.

I call Flight Services and ask if the NOTAM has been accidentally deleted or misfiled or something. They tell me I must have out of date publications. I assure them I wouldn't call them if I hadn't checked that, and that despite being a pilot I do know all my numbers, and the ones painted on the runway are not the ones in the book. The most disturbing thing about the whole conversation is how little the flight services specialist seems to care. This is a big deal. This is a major identifying characteristic of the airport. A friend said that if he came down an ILS and the numbers at the bottom didn't match the numbers on the chart, he would put in the power and go around. If the official publication is wrong about the numbers, how do I know I can trust what it says about runway length, elevation or anything else? The numbers aren't even newly painted. Am I the first pilot to care enough to report this, or has it been ignored so long?

Yes, every once in a while they have to change runway numbers. This happens either because the shift of magnetic north is sufficient that the runway is no longer aligned within a fair tolerance with the heading its number designates, or because the airport is building more runways and what was once plain old runway 14 is now runway 14L. But this sort of thing should be accompanied by NOTAMs, probably beginning with runway 14/32 closed for maintenance followed by amend publication: runway number 15-33 vice 14-32 and finishing off with a new cycle of publications that all show the correct new runway number. It should be a pretty standard process.

I depart the next day, this time calling the runway by the number painted on the pavement, and climb through ten thousand feet before I can get a hold of centre. I really feel like I'm in the land beyond civilization. I leave it behind and end the day at a little airport in another province. And it also has the wrong runway numbers! Is someone trying to drive me insane? I report this one too, and either they care more about such things in this province or the ranting lady tone in my voice warns the specialist to humour me, because he seems to appreciate more than the previous one that this is something that Should Not Happen. I'd never seen that in my whole career, and then I get two on consecutive days.

Logical Deductions 101

This post might have followed this post had I blogged things in the order of the notes I made for you. See, I still make notes for you. I make them right on my OFP, my operational flight plan, an official document of sorts which my company has to keep on file for years, or at least months, I don't feel like remembering which. It (this post) still follows it (the other post). There are just intervening things. That's what life's like.

In that post, which was mostly about canola, we had to backtrack a runway, and make other traffic wait for us, after landing despite what appeared to be a perfectly serviceable crossing runway that led back to the taxiway. The other runway was closed. Now for the exciting conclusion.

The next day on preflight inspection I find grass clippings on my aircraft. (Disclaimer, they could have been canola clippings). This isn't completely bizarre. In the last month I have found things as diverse as mouse intestines, dime-sized purple blobs, and fluffy weed seeds on my airplane. I suspect a messy owl dining atop my vertical stab, birds that had previously eaten purple berries, and fluffy weeds, respectively. The last one really doesn't require much in the way of logical deductions, but it still needed cleaning off.

I start up and I listen to the ATIS, which tells me that that the other runway is closed now and the previously closed one is open. There wasn't anything wrong with the one I landed on yesterday, and if they were painting or sealing or something they'd be smart enough not to mow, wouldn't they? It turns out the runway is closed for mowing. They need to close the whole runway for mowing?  It's a paved runway. They don't have to mow the runway itself. I'll bet I have landed more than a hundred times at airports with only one runway, while mowing was occurring. Sometimes there's an elaborate procedure whereby the controller advises the people with the tractors to remain clear of the runway. Sometimes they just publish a NOTAM or say on the ATIS that mowing is in progress. And sometimes you're on short final and it's like "SURPRISE! TRACTOR!" crossing the clearway. But we're pilots. We deal with these things. But that's not apparently how you do it when you have two runways.

The airport is busy. Lots of landing and departing traffic and there's a Nav Canada Challenger jet flying dozens of passes from different directions. I hear they are planning a new RNAV approach into here. I did the DME/LOC the other day, testing the autopilot, and it was pretty usable. You come over a wide canyon on the way in, so no obstacles letting the designers give you a low enough MDA that I had my hands very right there, should the autopilot decide at any moment that now would be a good time to dive. It didn't.

Also my coworker has brought five separate pairs of footwear. I have one: I fly, go to dinner and work out in the same shoes. So why does his luggage weigh so much less than mine?