The Trouble With Smithers

The scenic little mountain town of Smithers, a booming metropolis of 5,600 people, lies in a wide river valley surrounded on all sides by breathtaking snow-covered mountain peaks, spectacular wilderness and huge provincial parks. The air is clean, the panoramas unmatched. It’s a sight to behold: Super Natural BC at its finest.

Smithers Airport terminal

A mere 2½ and a half hours’ circuitous drive from Terrace, the closest “major” town. The communities of Prince George and Prince Rupert, east and west of Smithers respectively, are each about a 5-hour drive away. Beyond that, there’s not much else around that’s big enough to get a label on Google Earth.

What I’m trying to say, of course, is that Smithers is in the middle of nowhere. Gorgeous, but far from literally everything. Take a map of BC, plant a dot dead centre from anywhere, and that’s where Smithers is.

Which is why I get to fly there.

Jazz connects Northern and Southern BC. We service all four of the communities I just mentioned. There are some other minor airlines that fly between Smithers and its nearby neighbour, Terrace, but for the most part, we’re it. Consider your choice: a 13-hour drive at today’s gas prices, challenging the mountain passes and rugged road conditions – or, a smooth and scenic 1.8-hour flight, complete with orange juice and pretzels, which might cost $300 if you can get a seat sale. Who wouldn’t want to fly there?

However, that said…

Travellers to Smithers need to be ready for the unexpected. The mountainous weather can be unpredictable and change quickly. Gusty winds and snow squalls can funnel down the river valley without warning. The airport only has two published approaches for landing. If the ceiling drops too low, or snow obscures the visibility, or the wind picks up too strongly out of the south, be prepared to visit beautiful Terrace (or Prince George if you’re really lucky) for a few hours.

Such is life in a northern town. We can’t predict the weather, and sometimes we have to avoid it outright.

Which brings us back to me flying my little Dash-8 over here. Smithers and I don’t get along. For whatever reason, I have experienced more stress and trouble whenever Smithers is involved. When it’s a nice day up there, it’s a treat to fly into. When it’s not… well, you’ll see.

The RNAV approach to Runway 15

The one runway at Smithers Airport is aligned southeast-northwest (ends are numbered 15 and 33). There are two approaches utilizing GPS, one for each end. The northwest facing one is relatively straightforward, running straight up the valley from the south with a slight dogleg turn for the mountain peaks on either side. The southeast facing approach is little tougher, following a square path around the airport to the north, then turning southbound from a high altitude, again on account of the mountainous terrain. The flight path on this approach is quite steep at the end, so it’s imperative to be slowed down and “configured” (landing gear and flaps down, speed slowed to approach of 120 knots) prior to beginning this final dive. On account of the steep angle, we are not permitted to follow a “stabilized constant descent angle” (SCDA), which basically means flattening out the steps on an approach into a nice smooth path. Instead, we have take the steps; descend to an altitude until past a certain point, then jump down to another altitude, level off until the next point, and so on. To add to the complication, the runway is not actually lined up with the approach path, requiring a slight turn to the right just a fraction of a mile from touchdown.

It’s not as tough as days past, when all you had to follow was a wavering needle occasionally pointing at a radio beacon on the ground and trying to set a precise track off it. Point of interest though: Smithers has one of these approaches too, if you are really feeling adventurous.

With all that, why would we ever approach to this runway? The limits for both ceiling and visibility are lower, making it a bit more sure of landing than the other way (700’ and 2 miles, vs. 1500’ and 3 miles). And of course, if we have that pesky strong south wind.

Most of the troubles I’ve had with Smithers involve this complicated approach to Runway 15. Nothing to do with the approach itself, mind you…

SMITHERS BAD DAY #1: One wintery day, with my captain flying the aircraft, we were just past the final approach fix and descending to our final altitude of 700’. It was turbulent. It was gusty. It had just started snowing like crazy. My job was to look forward out the window, squinting through the white-on-white background of snow on ground, searching for a visual on the runway. With the missed approach point coming up fast, I scoured the scenery trying to distinguish ground from sky.

Finally, I thought I saw something. Just in front of us I could see a small narrow patch of ground that looked like an uneven gravel road. That can’t be the runway… can it? It’s too small.  We got closer. We were still at 700’, unable to descend until we could positively see the landing area.

“Do you see it?” Peter, my captain, asked me tensely.

“I don’t… wait, yes I do! Just off to your right.”

He snapped his head up to look. Sure enough, just in front of that little patch of gravelly no-texture, something twinkled briefly. Then we saw it again against the white snowy background. It was the chasing strobe lights leading us to the threshold.

Another beat, and finally he saw it. “Can you get down in time?” I asked. By now, we had barely half a mile to the runway and had not descended below 700.

“Yes, I think I’ve got it.” He chopped the power levers to idle and the already-slowed Dash dropped. He pointed the nose down at the threshold, which was now becoming more clear as we broke out of the cloud layers. The unclear, fuzzy area I had seen was actually the blurred centerline of the runway, roughly scraped clean by a snowplow but now quickly becoming covered with blowing snow, resulting in an irregular, narrow grey shape.

The TAWS, or Terrain Avoidance Warning System, talks to us from time to time. Most of what he says is altitudes above the ground, starting at 500, then 100, then counting down 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10. He has a nice authoritative radio-announcer’s voice… most of the time.

“One… hundred,” our airplane intoned. Almost there. Indeed, the ground was coming up rather fast. Suddenly the TAWS shouted “Sink rate! Sink rate! Pull up!” He just realized that we were closing in a little faster than we maybe should have.

“You really should add some power,” I suggested nervously to Peter. He did, shallowing our descent a little. His course to the runway was still a bit uneven.

Usually when TAWS counts off the last 50 feet, there’s a pause of about 1 second between each call, as we descend smoothly and slowly through each altitude. This time the TAWS started rapidly counting, “50 40 30…” without any hesitation.

When we hit, we hit pretty hard. It was a safe enough landing, but by far one of the hardest I’d ever experienced in the Dash. We swerved crookedly for a minute on the slippery surface before the wheels caught on the barely-scraped pavement.

Welcome to Smithers, everyone. Thanks for flying with us.

After we took a breath at the gate, while the passengers were shakily deplaning, Peter commented to me that he should have asked me to take control. I had the runway in sight. He admitted that although he saw the threshold, he didn’t really have a perspective on its angle to us, because of the irregularly plowed shape. The strobes leading to the approach were virtually invisible against the white snowy ground.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. When I saw how much trouble he was having, I should have just asked to take control. He would have handed it over happily.

A similar approach some time later when I was Pilot-Flying, I was a little more prepared. And I discovered that seeing snow covered strobe lights is much easier at night.

SMITHERS BAD DAY #2: One night a few weeks later, again acting as Pilot-Monitoring while my captain flew, we were establishing on the same approach in considerably better weather. Not as much snow this time, but the visibility was still fairly bad. We were in cloud on the north section of the approach, over the high terrain in smooth air.

Paul, the captain this time, was happily watching the autopilot fly down the GPS track, nicely centered, right down the middle. I happened to glance at my instrument, which usually shows the exact same picture. This time, however, mine was deflected slightly left, which should mean we were a little north of the track we wanted. Differences between the GPS units were common, as there are two different computers powering them on board. While they almost always matched, sometimes one would read a few digits different.

“Hey, look at this,” I pointed out to Paul. He didn’t seem too concerned. His navigational instrument was still pointed squarely at the fix where we would turn final.

“Radio altimeter,” our airplane stated cheerfully.

“What?” The radar altimeter readout was now showing there was terrain only 1700’ below us. And getting closer. That shouldn’t be…

I checked the instruments again. The flying side, on the captain’s panel for this trip, was still dead center, driving the aircraft. Mine was deflected slightly more to the left than it had been.

I pressed “direct to” on my GPS, a procedure that would re-center the needle and refresh the direction we were supposed to go. My needle decisively jumped 30 degrees to the left, indicating how far off course we had drifted. We were north of where we were supposed to be, and heading slowly further and further away.

“Turn left now, quick! At least heading 200!” I told Paul, re-centering his GPS as well.

Just then, I caught sight of the ground. The mountains were indeed a bit closer than they should have been. Right after that, both GPS units realigned themselves. We got back on track and the rest of the approach was normal.

What had happened was the GPS driving the aircraft had lost its resolution on the satellites, and was basically “guessing” our location based on our last known heading and speed. This mode, called “dead reckoning”, is okay for short periods of time, but past a few minutes, the information it’s basing its calculation on gets stale and more inaccurate.

But some of you might be wondering, "That seems terribly unsafe! How do you allow errors like this to happen?" Well, have no fear. These GPS units are so accurate that "off course" only amounts to a few meters. In this case, the error appeared more drastic because we were almost on top of the point we were heading towards. In actuality, we probably weren't even a half mile off course. And in end, if the devices hadn't aligned or I hadn't caught sight of the ground, we would have simply levelled off and either tried something else, or gone to our alternate. No worries, dear reader. 

SMITHERS BAD DAY #3: We had a nearly-full load, and once again it was forecast to snow. The trip up was long but uneventful. Due to the lower ceiling, we started to set up for the same northern approach to runway 15. We had descended to about 14,000’ on the initial inbound leg, when we got a call.

“Jazz 561, Smithers Radio.”

“Go ahead for 561.”

“We just got a call from your company. They’re telling you to go back to Vancouver.”

Huh?

“I’m sorry, say again?”

“Your company has been trying to reach you but I guess you can’t hear them. They said they need you to go back to Vancouver.”

Okay, let’s start at the beginning. All IFR flights have an “alternate”, a secondary airport that you carry enough fuel to land at in case you can’t land at your destination. Most of the time, our starting point is a good choice because the passengers can at least try another flight later. I mean, how inconvenient is it if you are trying to get to Vancouver from Victoria, and you end up somewhere like Eugene, Oregon? That’s not going to get you on your way to Puerto Vallarta or Toronto or New Delhi or wherever.

Today, on account of the bad weather and headwinds all the way up, our alternate was a nice close location: Prince George. This gave us enough fuel to try the challenging approach into Smithers, miss, try again or hold for a bit, give up, and still make it Prince George and land. Typical for Northern BC in late winter.

“Vancouver Center, Jazz 561. We might need a reroute here in a second, can we stay leveled at 14,000?”

“Altitude your discretion, Jazz 561.”

We finally got someone on the radio from Dispatch. It had started snowing in Smithers (expected). But Smithers Operations just reported that the deicing equipment on the ground was broken (not expected). So, had we landed with the snow coming down, we would not have been able to take off again because there was no way to remove the snow from the wings and tail. The weather back in Vancouver was clear, so they were opting to send us all the way back.

We turned the aircraft south and checked our new groundspeed. Headwind now a tailwind, we picked up a good chunk of speed. We checked the fuel. Because we hadn’t started the approach, we actually did have enough to get back to Vancouver. Just enough.

So off we went. We had to break the bad news to the flight attendant, and then tell the hapless passengers over the PA. Poor people.

Back in Vancouver airspace, we flew the simple visual approach onto 08L. The captain, Pilot-Flying, asked for “gear down”. I moved the gear lever to the down position.

Nothing happened.

“What the…” I nudged the gear lever, thinking maybe it wasn’t locked. It was.

Zip, zilch, nada. Absolutely nothing moved. Well, except for 3 red lights on the gear panel. GEAR UNSAFE, they read.

“The gear won’t go down.”

“What?” Anthony, my captain, also reached over the nudged the gear handle, like that would make a difference. It didn’t.

“Cycle that.” I did. In the “up” position, the red lights went out. Back to “down”, the red lights came back on and still nothing happened.

“Vancouver Tower from Jazz 561,” I called, “we’re going to need to level off here for a minute. We have a warning indication we have to check out.”

“Roger that, Jazz 561. Level off there and let us know when you’re able to resume the approach.” Remember it was a nice sunny day. The controllers were pretty relaxed.

“What do you want to do?” I asked Anthony. I had the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH) in my hand. This is the checklist for emergencies that we generally only touch in simulator training.

“We barely have the fuel to mess around with emergency checklists right now,” he answered thoughtfully. The gauges showed we were right at our reserves. “Okay, we better start running it.”

I was about the open to the Landing Gear Manual Extension section when I was interrupted by a noise. The scrape then whir and clunk of the landing gear extending.

“What did you do?” Anthony asked me.

“Nothing! It just started up on its own.” The gear handle had still been sitting in the down position. The gear panel showed a nice comforting 3-green now.

“Well, it’s down; let’s get this thing on the ground.”

The plane was grounded as soon as we landed, of course. I found out later that a tiny wire behind a switch over my head labeled “Landing Gear Inhibit” was loose, engaging the circuit without the switch being thrown. It was basically “inhibiting” all gear motion, a process only utilized when doing a manual extension, as we had been about to do. It was a tiny flaw that could never have been discovered by inspection.

The flight attendant later told us that it was an unpleasant ride back. Many passengers wouldn’t even make eye contact with her. They must have been livid. And wow… did our lavatory ever need emptying.

And this wasn’t the only time Smithers gave me a landing gear scare. On one clear day flying visually down the valley, we went to extend the gear and the usually short “scraaape” sound that accompanies the nose gear door opening wouldn’t stop scraping. It kept on for a good 30 seconds while we watched, riveted on the red “UNSAFE” warning sitting over the nose wheel indication. Yes, it finally came down on its own. No, I never found out why it did that. All part of the mysterious Dash-8.

Smithers. It’s no wonder I still tense just a little when I see YYD on my line. And of course, it’s usually the last big flight of a pairing. And as I write this, we are mere weeks away from the first snow, preparing for another season of deicing and complicated approaches onto Runway 15. All part of another day.