Alaska News

Alaska aviators continue to struggle with poor weather reporting

Last month the Federal Aviation Administration canceled the contracts for five weather stations in Alaska. The move will mean pilots will no longer be able to receive reports from Farewell Lake, Merrill Pass West, Manley Hot Springs, Nabesna and Chandalar Lake. Now, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is trying to determine how pilots in Alaska were utilizing these stations in their flight planning.

The closed stations were part of the A-PAID Program whereby local residents are trained and certified by the National Weather Service to make a series of daily weather observations. The weather service announced in 2011 that the national program would be phased out.

The five Alaska stations were being funded by the FAA until October, as the data was used for aviation weather.

There is no clear picture of just how the information from the five closed stations was used by pilots in the past. Because of the dearth of weather reporting in some Alaska locations, pilots often gather weather from various available locations along a route or near a destination and use it to form as clear a picture as possible for their overall flight planning.

To understand the impact of these changes, developing an understanding of how the aviation community used the five closed stations is imperative. On paper, the locations of the closed stations might appear to be unnecessary or less relevant to users than other stations, but user demographics are not easily determined in Alaska airspace unless pilots far and wide weigh in with their reports on how these stations matter.

Tom George, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association regional manager for Alaska, is collecting this data and looking for feedback from pilots.

"We need to know how the weather from these stations has been used," George explained in a recent phone call, "where pilots were trying to go when obtaining this weather and the routes they were planning to fly."

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Once George has an idea of how great an area the closed weather stations affect, he will be able to better determine the true impact of these far-flung community resources which will then be passed on to the FAA.

Tom George can be contacted at tom.george@aopa.org. Read his recent in-depth article on this topic, "Alaska is a 'weather-poor' state" here.

Contact Colleen Mondor at colleen@alaskadispatch.com.

Colleen Mondor

Colleen Mondor is the author of "The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska." Find her at chasingray.com or on Twitter @chasingray.

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