from flight watch or an AFSS, once en route. It is important  to recognize weather presents a hazard, which in turn can  become an unmanageable risk. GA aircraft travel slowly and  must fly in the weather rather than above it. Since weather is  unpredictable, it is highly likely that during a flight, a pilot  will encounter weather conditions different from what he or  she expected. These weather conditions are not necessarily  severe, like ice or thunderstorms, and analysis has shown  that most VFR encounters with IMC involved low clouds  and restrictions to visibility. Scud running, or continued VFR flight into instrument  flight rules (IFR) conditions, pushes the pilot and aircraft  capabilities to the limit when the pilot tries to make visual  contact with the terrain. This is one of the most dangerous  things a pilot can do and illustrates how poor ADM links  directly to a human factor that leads to an accident. A number  of instrument-rated pilots die scud running while operating  VFR. Scud running is seldom successful, as can be seen in  the following accident report.  A Cessna 172C, piloted by a commercial pilot, was  substantially damaged when it struck several trees during a  precautionary landing on a road. Instrument meteorological  conditions (IMC) prevailed at the time of the accident. The  personal cross-country flight was being conducted without  a flight plan.  The pilot had purchased the airplane in Arkansas and was  ferrying it to his fixed base operation (FBO) in Utah. En  route stops were made and prior to departing the last stop,  the pilot, in a hurry and not wanting to walk back to the FBO  to call flight service, discussed the weather with a friend  who told the pilot that the weather was clear to the north.  Poor weather conditions prevented him from landing at his  original destination, so the pilot turned around and landed at  a privately owned airport with no service facilities. Shortly  thereafter, the pilot took off again and looped north toward  his destination. The “weather got bad” and the pilot decided  to make a precautionary landing on a snow-covered road.  The road came to a “T” and the airplane slid off the end. The  left wing and propeller struck the ground and the right wing  struck a tree. The right wing had leading edge compression  damage outboard of the root, and the left wing leading  edge was crushed near the wing tip fairing. Both propeller  blades were bent. As discussed throughout this handbook,  this accident was the result of a chain of poor decisions.  The pilot himself recalled what he should have done in this  situation, “I should have picked a spot to do a precautionary  landing sooner before the weather got bad. Second, I should  have called flight service to get a weather briefing, instead  of discussing it with a friend on the ramp.” In get-there-itis, personal or external pressure clouds the  vision and impairs judgment by causing a fixation on the  original goal or destination combined with a total disregard  for alternative course of action.  “I have to be in Houston by 7 o’clock.” In the previous case,  the pilot was simply lazy. Approximately 15 minutes after departure, the pilot of a Piper  PA-34-200T twin-engine airplane encountered IMC. The  non-instrument-rated private pilot lost control of the airplane  and impacted snow-covered terrain. Prior to the cross-country  flight, the pilot obtained three standard weather briefings,  of which two were obtained on the previous day and one  on the morning of the accident. The briefings included IFR  conditions along the planned route of flight.  According to the briefing and a statement from a friend, the  pilot intended to land the airplane prior to his destination if  the weather conditions were not visual flight rules (VFR).  The pilot would then “wait it out” until the weather conditions  improved. According to radar data, the airplane departed from  the airport and was traveling on a southeasterly heading. For  the first 15 minutes of the flight, the airplane maintained a  level altitude and a consistent heading. For the last minute  of the flight, the airplane entered a descent of 2,500 feet per  minute (fpm), a climb of 3,000 fpm, a 1,300 fpm descent, and  the airplane’s heading varied in several degrees. The airplane  impacted the terrain in a right wing low, nose-down attitude.  Looking beyond the summary, get-there-itis leads to a poor  aeronautical decision because this pilot repeatedly sought  weather briefings for a VFR flight from Pueblo, Colorado,  to Tyler, Texas. During a 17-minute briefing at 0452, he was  informed of weather conditions along his planned route of  flight that included IFR conditions that were moving south,  moderate icing conditions for the state of Colorado, and  low ceilings of visibility along the planned route of flight.  His next call took place at 0505, approximately 1½ hours  prior to takeoff. The pilot responded to the reported weather  conditions by saying “so I’ve got a, I’ve got a little tunnel  there that looks decent right now...from what that will tell  me I’ve got a, I’ve got an open shot over the butte.”  The pilot began the flight 1½ hours after his weather update,  neglecting to weigh the risks created by a very volatile  weather situation developing across the state.  The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)  determined the probable cause of this accident was the pilot’s  failure to maintain control of the airplane after an inadvertent  encounter with IMC, resulting in the subsequent impact with  5-6 Get-There-Itis Scud Running