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Question of the Week

AVweb reader Steve Biddle asks: You depart VFR in VFR conditions on a cross-country. Midway through your trip, you start to see a lower layer (overcast) in front of you. You have the required cloud clearance of 1000 above, and it is clear above. Your destination is reporting clear skies so you proceed. But once you find yourself above the overcast you realize you no longer have any visual ground contact. There is nothing but a layer of cloud below you. Are you still legally VFR at that point? Soon the overcast layer becomes broken, then scattered, finally clear — and you land at your destination without incident. But what about the halfway point of the trip that you had no visual reference to the ground?
The flight was legal, but if something had gone wrong, forcing the pilot to descend into the overcast, the flight would have not only become illegal, but extremely hazardous.
If something had gone wrong, forcing the pilot to descend into the overcast, and the pilot declared an emergency before doing so, that portion of the flight would have been just as legal as CAVU flight in Class G airspace. That portion of the trip flown above an overcast was flown in arguably poor judgement, but it was not illegal.
There are catch-all regulations drawn specifically to address those acts of stupidity not explicitly prohibited by the regs. For all practical purposes (and enforcement actions), the flight (as flown) was illegal.


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