Short Final: Lonely

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Pilots were flying a PA28 from Ohio to New England, attempting to navigate around Hurricane Dorian, which was impacting the North Carolina coastline.
  • During the flight, air traffic control communications became eerily quiet, leading the pilot to confirm radio contact.
  • The air traffic controller's response ("It's pretty lonely down here today, too ...") confirmed the unusually quiet conditions, implying minimal air traffic due to the hurricane.
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Sept. 5, 2019. Hurricane Dorian is pounding the North Carolina shoreline. We are CAVU in Ohio headed for New England and hoping to slide across the top of the weather, which is an arc of clouds 350 miles to the southeast of us, clearly rising above the horizon. We have been getting handed from one approach to another—but it has gone eerily quiet. We are delivering a PA28 and after commenting to my fellow pilot about how quiet it has gone, I carefully check the radios to make sure we haven’t pushed a wrong button in the new-to-us-aircraft. All seems good so I press the PTT:

“Approach, are we still talking to each other?”

“It’s pretty lonely down here today, too …”

Graeme Smith

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