Posted on the
AOPA Forum:
Sounds about right. I live about 13 miles from that airport, and we were having morning fog that dense for several days prior, across the entire central and western part of the state. I cancelled two of my own flights that week because of it.
The fog would start to build shortly after sunset, and by sunrise the next morning it was about like a bowl of chowder and extended up a couple of hundred feet or so. Calm wind and cool temps kept the fog persistent until 10 or 11 in the morning, which is a bit unusual because our fogs normally burn off within an hour or so of sunrise. Reports had visibility at less than 1/4 mile; from what I saw it was much much less, maybe a few hundred feet.
BUT, please remember that such a simple measure of "visibility" doesn't really address what you might need to see. Maybe in the fog you can see a car's tail lights at 1/4 mile, but that doesn't mean you can see a white centerline or a gray coyote on the runway at anything more than 50 feet.
I've read the posts above about skilled IFR pilots being able to take off in 0/0 conditions, and while that may be true it doesn't address the entire picture. Please forgive me if I'm stating the obvious for some of you, but some postings make me think that the following may be helpful.
Risk management considers both the
probability of occurrence and the
consequence of occurrence. Risks can be mitigated by addressing either or (
preferably) both. When an unmitigated consequence is classified as catastrophic (i.e., loss of life),however, it is not sufficient to address only the probability side; we
must mitigate the consequence as well.
Pilot skill and training, together with proper maintenance, pre-flight inspection, etc., can substantially the reduce probability of occurrence of a crash, but not the consequence of a crash. So, let's talk consequence for a moment...
If a problem does occur in flight that prevents remaining airborne, the unmitigated consequence would be destruction of the aircraft and loss of life. Mitigation of the consequence can reduce the outcome to, let's say, (1) destruction of the aircraft with serious injury to occupants, (2) damage to the aircraft, minor injuries to the people, (3) minor damage, no injuries, and (4) normal landing, no damage or injuries.
Mitigating actions that would drive these consequences down depend on when the problem occurs (take-off, cruise, etc.) and available landing sites, and range from a landing on the runway or at an alternate airport to a crash-landing in bad terrain or a ditching.
In this case,
the fog precluded virtually all means of mitigating the consequence of an in-flight failure. The runway, the rest of the airport, nearby fields, lakes, alternate airports, etc. could not be seen. Regardless of how well the probability of occurrence was mitigated by the pilot, when a problem did occur he had no way to reduce the consequence below the catastrophic.
Also, keep in mind that even extremely good skill does not mitigate all probability of a problem; the pilot would not have been able to see and avoid a large bird, a coyote on the runway, etc. (Heck, if there had been another aircraft on approach, he wouldn't have been able to see it and the tower was closed.) Or there could have been a mechanical failure.
In my never-humble but often wrong and frequently ignored opinion, this pilot likely failed to consider the consequence aspect of risk management and made a poor decision, especially given that fact that the only negative consequence of waiting a couple of hours would have been arriving late for lunch.
God rest their souls.
