If It's Not One Thing, It's Another...

The clouds are still hanging ominously low on the eastern seaboard, but the winds have lessened considerably. It’s still breezy, but it won’t be a show stopper, at least on this end of our flight. The latest satellite shot from Europe isn’t a rosy picture.

From the Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF), our destination in Germany is forecasting light winds and a 1000’ broken ceiling with light rain and snow at our projected arrival time. In addition, there is light rime icing in clouds up to 7000' feet. It’ll get worse before it’ll get better; the ceiling will drop to 700’ broken until 0700 GMT.

However, this dreary forecast would not prevent us from landing at our destination, so the problem must be with our required weather alternate. A quick look at potential alternates shows more of the same at our other European bases, and our alternate weather must be considerably better in case we have to divert. If it was up to me, I’d bump some cargo, add more fuel, and file an alternate about 45 minutes away from our destination where the cloud ceiling is 2000' broken.

We can only sit up to six hours in our billeting purgatory before they either alert us to fly or release us back to crew rest. It may seem odd that we cannot fly after being on the hook for hours on end doing absolutely nothing productive, but we have specific rules that determine when we can legally fly. So here we sit, like a belle at a ball, waiting for somebody to dance with.