(PaulH) wrote
I have a fairly new IFR rating and am wondering how much help to
expect from ATC on Tstorm avoidance. Will they suggest re-routing or
do you have to request it based on visual, FSS, or stormscope
location?

My experience is that this varies dramatically.

Sometimes, you get a controller who really knows his **** and really
cares about you - he wants to know if it's OK to vector you over water
to less covective areas, will use his RADAR to vector you around
cells, will solicit information from better-equipped aircraft, and
will generally do everything he can to get you where you are going
safely.

Sometimes you get a controller who won't give you more than 2 minutes
off frequency to contact Fligh****ch (and if the weather is bad, that
won't be enough), will flatly tell you he's not painting any weather
(without telling you that he's not painting it because he turned it
off to declutter his display), and will even vector you off course and
right into a cell.

I have actually heard a controller say after he was queried by a pilot
about weather up ahead "Oh, yeah - that's a Level 4. You can deviate
around it if you need to."

A lot of this has to do with airspace congestion. Most of the people
flying when there are embedded T-storms around have some sort of
weather avoidance (Spherics or RADAR) on board, and are deviating
around the areas of bad weather. Controllers rarely if ever deny such
deviation requests (maybe because they know that most experienced IFR
pilots will simply declare an emergency and deviate anyway) but this
leaves them with traffic congestion in the good areas and an increased
workload. When a controller in such a situation gets overloaded,
where do you think he's going to send you?

Face it - if you're going to fly IMC when there are T-storms around,
you need some sort of weather avoidance gear. Relying on ATC is not a
realistic option.

Michael