Weather services for pilots in the North

Day 7, part 2: Northway, Alaska

After the cursory customs inspection I walked a hundred yards to the flight service station (FSS) on the Northway airport to take a look at conditions going onward. Besides these vestiges of the federal government, there wasn't much going on at Northway other than a greasy-spoon type restaurant, with the whole airport surrounded by miles of flat land taken up by a land divided into marshes and areas of forest.

What resources are at your disposal for a trip to Alaska? Here's what I used:

• Alaska
•  FAA Alaska Aviation Weather Unit
• Alaska WX cams
• Visit in person or call one of the Alaska Flight Service Stations (Calling 800-WX-BRIEF as you would in the lower 48 goes to our friends at Lockheed; take down the phone numbers of the Alaska station closest to you if you can't visit one in person) 
• Canada
• Canada's Aviation Weather Website (the graphical area forecast images will soon become your friend)
• Canada WX cams
• Flight Information Centres (FIC) in Canada, in person if you're in Whitehorse, or via telephone
• Many of the more sizable airports have an awkward-to-use kiosk that must have been designed by an out-of-work 1980s arcade game mechanical engineer, that basically provides access to the above website and a phone that direct-dials the nearest FIC, locations listed in the Canada Flight Supplement

This walk-in to the FSS thing was new to me. In the lower 48 states, and Canada (except Whitehorse, where I'd just come from), pilots check weather over the internet, where available, or telephone to an FSS whose multiple locations in the lower 48 had been repeatedly consolidated, and eventually spun-off to a contractor (Lockheed Martin). When I was learning to fly in the mid 1990s, the consolidation was already underway and the local expertise on the intricacies of the local micro-climates that a weather observer in the field would develop over time had been lost.

At the time I was a bit of a flying and computer geek and put together a website of links, web-forms, and even some programs (tcl scripts) to pull weather information from various academic and government sources for the pacific northwest where I resided at the time. The site got a lot of traffic, but I eventually let it fall to the wayside as the government got its online presence together and put together what is now this site, which most lower-48 pilots use. While the folks at Lockheed are nice people, it just ain't the same, and often you'll get a briefer on the phone who can do little more than read you the same data available online, i.e. someone far away from a meteorologist.

In Alaska, its different. The weather is more challenging along with the terrain, and general aviation is much more of a life-line, as most of the state cannot be reached by road. Flight service stations exist at many of the key small airports, and -- for the time being -- they're still run by the FAA, where you can simply walk right in and talk to someone about the weather along your route. Most of the time, these are staffed by one person whose working 2-3 jobs (make that 4, when you walk in) simultaneously, and they do it well. Say what you will about what government should or should not do, but these guys know their stuff, and the one-on-one availability is a big asset to safety.

The specialist working at a station typically gives traffic advisories to aircraft operating near the airport the station is located at, opens and closes flight plans, takes flight plans (in a very abbreviated and efficient format compared to the lower 48), provides a verbal interpretation of weather camera images to pilots in flight, negotiates IFR clearances, and handles one one or more remote communications outlet frequenies for aircraft some distance away.

I was particularly impressed with the quick and dirty flight plan concept. In the lower 48 one typically had to file a half hour before departure for reasons I can't comprehend, and give a litany of information not directly pertinent to the flight plan's purpose (where to send search and rescue looking for an overdue aircraft, and how many people to look for). Moreover, a route of flight defined by visual landmarks or routes is rejected or omitted. Here, it was common to state which highway / river / mountain pass / glacier you'd be following, or what lake you'd be landing on. This might consist of the following that I later overheard in Talkeetna, from one of the glacier tour operators as he taxied out:

"Talkeetna radio, Beaver 12345, departing for the circle mountain tour, 2 hours en route, 9 aboard, pilot Jones"
"Beaver 12345, Talkeetna radio, flight plan activated"

In Northway, the briefer was on temporary assignment from his home to the far north in Barrow. My initial impression was of an extrovert who might be a bit lonely, but that was quickly replaced by one of a fellow who had genuine interest and concern in the safety for a newcomer to the area.

"How much mountain flying have you done?" he asked

"Some, I fly across the Sierras in California regularly and learned to fly around the Cascades" (though the mountain flying in Alaska was, to be fair, substantially different, something I'll get into later)

"Good, a lot of folks come up here to see Alaska having only flown around the midwest. If you get into trouble, don't forget that you can land on a road. Any highway in Alaska can be used legally by aircraft if there is a need to. I was driving to Valdez once in low weather and a Jet Ranger came up behind me and landed. The pilot apologized in case he scared me, it was pretty amusing."

Awesome, so if that bathroom break became urgent and the road was clear....

I found his parting comments on a last line of defense against an animal that charges you equally amusing:

"Oh, and I don't care what those damned guidebooks say, most people up here are packing."

I informed him of my shotgun/slug combination, bear spray for hiking, and lamented that I could not (legally) bring my pistol through Canada.