IFR from ports

[Charan Kumar]

In ZOA, we have a pilot who regularly flies near the Tahoe area. Controllers would have surely noticed a N172BM flying about in that area. Once in a while, when conditions call for it, he would call up for FF. But on one particular flight, he ended up in the soup and requested FF out of the airport, I said, he could do IFR departure/VFR-on-top and we settled on it. But when I went to clear him for it, I noticed he was departing from the lake, Q74 if I am not mistaken, which is Homewood just outside the resort I suppose. I cleared him with a non-towered airport phraseology, but I wasn't sure it was right. How would I provide him any services in the area if he was going to depart there especially because he would be under our MVA. Maybe there is a terrain map, but I wasn't using any.

So now for qns!! How do you handle tfc like that? We are not allowed to vector below MVA, so what do we do here? Should the pilot have called off the flight if he can't get out, probably best in r/w?

Also, during another flight, his destination was to a non-towered airport with conditions below VFR minimums, again, I warned him and terminated svcs, but is there something else that can be done? That airport didn't have any approach procedures, none, nada, IIRC KRIU (http://www.airnav.com/airport/kriu).

Tks in advance for the answers!!
Cheers!!

PS. Jude, if you are part of our forums, please feel free to chime in with your thoughts!!

[David Carman]

As for departing from water vs land, it's just an uncontrolled airport.

Departing below the MVA like that, if the pilot filed like "SWR FMG" as his route and you said "cleared as filed" it's on the pilot to get safely to SWR, by whatever means they see fit. If they think they can do that, it's not really your job to stop them. It's on the pilot to decide whether they can make it to an ODP or what to try their luck some other way. You're correct that you cannot say in the clearance anything that implies a vector until they are above the MVA (like direct, or a heading).

KRIU airport appears to be class G which means the weather mins are actually 1 mile and clear of clouds during the day. Secondly, it's not your decision whether it is VFR and the pilot can make it to the airport or not, that's the pilot's decision as weather may have changed since the METAR you have, your job is to advise the pilot of the reported weather as best you can and offer assistance if needed like vectors, or IFR clearance to a nearby airport with an approach.

[Charan Kumar]

Cool, I pretty much did as you advised. Since this was during the ZLA Suicide ops when we had a lot of flights in our airspace and any material i could come up with gave me nothing, and that was my first time with airports with no ODP or arrival procedures, and I wanted to make sure I didn't overlook anything because of other tfc.

Tks for the clarification!!