2001-12 · NASA ASRS report 533006
C152 INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT GOT TRAPPED BY A SNOW STORM AND WERE REQUIRED TO GET AN IMC CLRNC IN AN ACFT NOT APPROVED FOR IMC FLT.
ON DEC/TUE/01; WHILE ON A ROUTINE TRAINING FLT IN A CESSNA 152 I NOTICED THAT A FAST MOVING SNOWSTORM WAS MOVING TOWARDS THE PULLMAN ARPT; OUR HOME BASE. THE WX WAS NOT PREDICTED. I CUT THE FLT SHORT; AND WE HEADED FOR THE ARPT; WHICH WAS APPROX 8 MI AWAY. JUST PRIOR TO ENTERING THE CLASS E AIRSPACE WE WERE OVERTAKEN BY THE STORM. VISIBILITY DROPPED TO APPROX 1 MI; THE GND WAS NOT OBSCURED. I TOOK CTL OF THE ACFT; AND TURNED AROUND 180 DEGS IN AN EFFORT TO GET OUT OF THE STORM; HOWEVER; WE WERE NOT ABLE TO GET INTO BETTER METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. AT A LOW ALT WITH TERRAIN RISING AND CONDITIONS NOT IMPROVING; I ELECTED TO GET A POP UP IFR CLRNC; AND DIVERT TO THE LEWISTON ARPT; WHICH WAS APPROX 35 MI AWAY. THE ACFT IS NOT IFR APPROVED. WHILE; I HAVE NO INTENTION OF VIOLATING THE FAR'S; I FEEL THAT OBTAINING AN IFR CLRNC AT THAT TIME WAS THE ONLY WAY TO SAFELY CONCLUDE THE FLT. AFTER APPROX 25 MINS WITH ZSE VFR METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS WERE ENCOUNTERED; AND THE FLT WAS CONTINUED UNDER VFR UNTIL ITS SAFE TERMINATION AT THE LEWISTON ARPT.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.