We’ve all heard this old adage about significant and rapid weather changes. Thing is, if you follow the advice, your flight planning and success rate can improve.

By Frank Bowlin

As a professional pilot, I’ve often flown over 600 hours a year, and up to 80 hours or so in a month. With all that flying, I log less than 10 approaches to near minimums in a year and probably only one or two are all the way down to actual minimums. This suggests weather is usually reasonably good (Or you know someone at crew scheduling! —Ed.). That, in turn, suggests observing weather patterns and briefly waiting out the worst of it, or leaving a few hours early may be a very successful strategy of avoiding the nasty stuff. …