Pucker factor 10

And of course by puker factor 10 I'm referring to a scenario in which my ass is puckered to a very high degree. Stop trying to visualize.

Ok, so a couple of days ago while I'm in Portland OR I get my trip information for a flight on the 27th, and the only info on the airport I had at that point was it was to the CYXT airport. I mistook this initially for the Medicine Hat AB airport which has the identifier CYXH. CYXT is Terrace BC.

What's so special about Terrace? Well it's located in a tight box canyon valley on the west coast of BC. And it is easily one of the most difficult and unforgiving instrument approaches in Canada. Remember me talking about that approach I did around New Years into Kenora? Well that was a tricky approach because the weather was so bad. But it wasn't nearly as challenging as this one. Sure Kenora is difficult, but you just have to be on the ball. With Terrace, you have to make sure everything is set up properly or quite simply - you die.

Yes, you read correctly. Death. The appraoch into Terrace has claimed many aircraft and many lives. Some of you might recall a recent accident in Terrace where an MU-2 cargo aircraft operated by Navair crashed there shortly after take off last month. So what makes this airport so difficult? Well I already mentioned the unforgiving terrain in the area, and that combined with unforgiving weather and forces of nature make this approach a 10 on the pucker factor.

Click on this picture to see the full instrument approach procedure into Terrace. This is what we use to set up the aircraft's instruments properly to follow the approach in safely. You'll notice contour lines of all the peaks in the area and altitudes listed for "safe operations" within the area. I'll just say this, they're extremely high because of all the high terrain. The weather was bad with the cloud ceilings around 1000' above sea level, with icing conditions in the clouds and it was getting dark. Also, because the temperature was so close to zero we have to add extra altitude to the published information to allow for cold temperature corrections to our altitude sensing equipment in the plane. That by itself is a killing factor with many aircraft crashing into terrain because they did not adequtely adjust their altitdues to account for the cold temperature factors.



We approached from the east and intercepted the approach at 12,000 feet over the waypoint "DAVED", then flew down a glideslope and localizer right down to the airport. It is quite nerve racking when you're flying into the valley, without seeing anything around you but snow and precipitation being lit up by the aircraft's landing lights. Also knowing that terrain is all around you!

We land safely and offload our passengers. I then proceeded to "borrow" Air Canada's baggage cart to take all the luggage into the main terminal for our passengers. When doing this unfortunately we slightly "broke" said baggage cart when we accidently rammed it into a giant stuffed polar bear in the main lobby! It wasn't all my fault, it was a tight fit throught the terminal doors and my spotter on one side wasn't quite paying enough attention (read: drunk off his ass) and neglected to see the huge polar bear incased in a glass case infront of us. Well, we only slightly moved the polar bear display, but the top part of the baggage cart broke off... it appeared however it wasn't the first time it had happened by some duct tape remenants on it. So I didn't feel too bad. :)

Now we had to get the heck out of this valley and back up to a nice safe altitdue to get home. So the departure procedure is quite complicated but is essentially the reverse of how we landed. This time it was dark and snowing quite heavily. So the second we took off we no longer had any reference to the outside world and back to relying 100% on our instruments. I climbed that machine as fast as it was go up without stalling out of the sky so we could gain the required altitude as quickly as possible. Pucker factor 10 was finally reduced as we climbed through 12,000 feet and I knew we were clear of all the peaks. The flight home was uneventful and we took advantage of some very nice tailwinds at our cruising altitude of 27,000 feet and made it back in record time.

So if there are any questions on that instrument approach procedure just let me know, I'd be happy to answer any questions and maybe help shed some light on the whole subject for anyone that would like to understand it more.