Trust Your Gut...

Thanks Bruce White, MCFR, for pointing this in my direction...

Prior to lifting from the rooftop helipad, we evaluated the weather and identified low clouds and obscured local mountain tops. ( at least that's how i remember it. Its been a while and i just remember the weather being bad bad.)
The pilot stating something to the effect of “I think i can get down and around some of that stuff and get home…” to which the new flight nurse proclaimed “uh….yeah, OK. im good with that.”

The only thing that was ringing in my head after watching this go down was “Josh…..this is how crews get killed. They're tired, they want to sleep and they're willing to push a bad call to get there. This is what we've always been warned about and now your staring down the barrel of saying something or just going with it.”

What i was seeing was a pilot that is used to flying in worse than crap weather. But in a suitable aircraft. And i was seeing a new flight nurse that didn't know how to say no, or didn't want to.
So i said something. “Hey guys, im calling 3 to go here. I'm not comfortable launching in this weather. I know we all want to get home; i do too, believe me. But lets not push bad weather and make a bad decision. Lets hang out, watch the weather and see if it starts to break up or not.”
They agreed and we waited. I received no flack and no push back. I felt like i almost watched their faces go, “wow, we almost made a dodgy decision. That would have been really dumb. Yeah, lets wait for stuff to clear.” We waited till we could see stars, and the weather continued to break. We lifted with clear skies and stars in our windscreen and made an uneventful flight home.

Flight Nurse and blog contributor Josh Henke, ...

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