** Becky is instructed NOT to translate this entry to Ricardo’s mother. **
Apparently, no extended vacation on Ricky Air is complete without at least one leg of terror. You may remember that in 2008, our experience was that the Mexican aviation weather authorities were on permanent siesta and left their forecast stuck on “10 miles of visibility” regardless of the actual weather conditions. We had a flashback to that yesterday when we flew from Huatulcos to Tapachula.
Weather forecast: clear skies in Huatulcos; clear skies in Tapachula.
About 1.5 hours into our projected 2.5-hour flight, we started to experience some light sprinkles. These quickly turned to vicious driving rain, reducing our visibility to about ZERO at 2K feet.
A quick check of emergency options on our Aerial GPS (my new best friend, I plan to construct a shrine to it upon my return to Austin) revealed that we had no options. We were far enough from our departure point and close enough to our destination airport, that we had no choice but to continue. There were no airports closer than our destination airport, which was about an hour away.
Also, once having filed a flight plan in Mexico, you are required to stick to it. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. An airport Commandante had previously explained to us that if we deviate from our flight plan for whatever reason, we and the aircraft will be impounded for as long as it takes the Mexican authorities to conduct an official investigation into our provenience and purposes for being in Mexico, etc.
Uh, Mexican jail, y’all … for at least 3 days, he said. Better than dying of course, but it was moot because there was no closer airport than the one we’d filed a flight plan for. We couldn’t see any abandoned landing strips or fields because we couldn’t see anything. Moreover, we were not in radio contact with any tower, because we were in the middle of nowhere.
These skies were strictly IFR. By necessity, we went into instruments mode. We descended to 700ft to try to improve our visibility – this gained us one half mile of visibility. I had to resort to the charts to localize any antennae or other ground obstructions we might meet. I’m sure the aerial GPS offers this functionality, but we haven’t learned every feature of the device…
Folks, what followed was a VERY TENSE one hour of flying blind, at a low altitude and relying on instruments and the Aerial GPS to guide us to the airport.
40 miles from the airport the tower picked us up and reported… what? Yes, you guessed it: clear skies and 5 miles of visibility!!!
WTF, MEXICO??
Ricardo executed a super-short final and a lovely, lovely landing in the driving rain. We could finally breathe as we shlepped across the tarmac to the the Commandancia.
The lime trees outside the Commandancia were laden with ripe limes and abuzz with dozens of hummingbirds frolicking in the rain. I wonder if I would have even noticed them if I hadn't recently been feeling so close to my demise...
NB: We’ve been in Tapachula for almost 24 hours now and the rain has not stopped.
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