It’s very interesting to watch different levels of experience/wisdom navigate thunderstorms in the enroute ATC environment, even from an airline standpoint. Some are willing to chance a hole, others have no interest regardless of what the previous aircraft do. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for some of these flight deck conversations. Dare I say I see way too many regional carriers who fly through stuff that the mainlines won’t get within 50 miles of.
I see it all the time. When a “Brickyard“ or other RJ call sign takes a turn to avoid, I listen out of curiosity, but I’ve seen them make terrible decisions.
e.g. Big cell, clear rain shaft, ugly radar return* approaching the field in Orlando. As it gets near the approach end of our departure runway, Tower clears a Delta for takeoff.
They decline.
Tower then clears the American behind him.
They decline.
Tower then clears the Southwest behind American.
They decline.
Tower then clears us.
We decline.
Tower clears the Continental Express behind us.
They accept takeoff clearance, and back taxi down the runway to get in position.
As they do, a deep, anonymous voice says, “good luck…”
As they take off, the rain shaft has reached the end of the runway from which they’re rolling.
They roll for an unusually long distance, and climb at a very shallow, slow rate. They didn’t fess up to being hammered by a big tailwind from a microburst, but I’d bet my next paycheck that’s what happened.
Every experienced pilot looked at the approaching cell, saw the potential for a microburst and did the prudent thing by delaying the takeoff.
But the RJ guys were excited to taxi past the “big boys” and go.
Fools.
*The radar gradient can tell you a lot about a cell. When it’s steep, when it goes from green to yellow to red over a very short distance that cell is dangerous. It’s developing quickly and has a lot of updraft, which means it will soon have a lot of downdraft, often in the form of a microburst. Microbursts are often fatal. The clearly defined rain shaft speaks to a big downdraft inside a rapidly building cell. Not good.