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Wildfire Smoke and TFRs: Flying in Southern California's Fire Season

Every year, wildfire smoke and fire-related flight restrictions become part of flying in Southern California. Fires in the mountains and foothills around the Inland Empire can put up temporary flight restrictions with little notice, fill valleys with haze, and bring firefighting aircraft into busy airspace. None of that has to end your flying season, but it does change how you plan.

How fire TFRs work

When there's a large fire, the FAA usually issues a temporary flight restriction under 14 CFR 91.137. That rule allows restrictions for three purposes: to protect people and property from a hazard on the surface, to provide a safe environment for disaster relief aircraft, or to prevent a crowd of sightseeing aircraft over an incident. Fire TFRs are most often the second kind, protecting the air tankers, helicopters and lead and air-attack airplanes working the fire.

Inside a fire TFR, you can't fly unless you meet one of the rule's narrow exceptions, so plan to go around it. The restriction is defined in a NOTAM, usually as a radius around a point and up to an altitude, and it can be issued, moved or expanded quickly as a fire grows.

Check, and check again

• Before every flight, check the FAA's TFR list at tfr.faa.gov and your NOTAMs. A standard briefing from Flight Service includes TFRs.
• On longer flights, check again before you head home. A fire that started after you took off can put a TFR across your route back.
• In the air, ask ATC or Flight Service if you see smoke or suspect a new fire. Flight following is worth having on fire-season days.
• Know where the fires are, not just where the TFRs are. Firefighting aircraft travel between fires, bases and water sources, outside the restricted area.

What smoke does to visibility

Smoke is harder to judge than haze from the ground. A few things to keep in mind:

• Visibility aloft can be much worse than the surface report. Smoke often spreads in layers, and an airport reporting 6 miles can sit under a band of smoke you'd find very hard to see through.
• VFR minimums still apply. In most of the airspace you'll fly, that means 3 statute miles of flight visibility (14 CFR 91.155). Smoke doesn't get a pass.
• Smoke hides terrain. The mountains around Redlands can disappear into haze long before visibility drops below legal minimums, which is exactly when pilots get into trouble near ridges.
• Inversions trap it. On still mornings, smoke can pool in the valleys and stay there until the afternoon mixes it out.
• Flying into the sun makes it worse. The same haze that looks thin with the sun behind you can turn to a white wall flying toward it.

Reading smoke in the reports

METARs use their own codes for what's in the air. FU means smoke and HZ means haze, and either one alongside a falling visibility is your cue to look closer. Compare San Bernardino's and Riverside's reports with satellite imagery and PIREPs, and watch the trend over several hours. Smoke that's thin at 9 a.m. can be thick by noon if the wind shifts, or clear out when the afternoon breeze mixes it away.

Stay clear of the fire itself

Large fires can create their own weather: strong updrafts, gusty and shifting winds, and towering smoke clouds called pyrocumulus, with turbulence well beyond the visible smoke. Even outside a TFR, give an active fire a wide berth, and never orbit one to take a look. That airspace belongs to the people fighting it.

Fire season around Redlands

Fire activity in Southern California is highest in summer and fall, and Santa Ana winds can make fall fires grow especially fast. Firefighting aircraft are based nearby; Hemet-Ryan Airport, about 22 nautical miles south-southeast of Redlands, is a Cal Fire air attack base, and the FAA notes air tanker activity there from May through November. Expect to hear and see firefighting aircraft in the area, and give them right of way in every sense.

A fire-season checklist

• Check TFRs and NOTAMs before you go and before you come back.
• Read the visibility trend at airports along your route, not just the latest report.
• Plan routes away from active fires, even if no TFR covers them yet.
• Have an alternate that's upwind of the smoke.
• Use flight following, and listen for traffic reports about firefighting aircraft.
• Set a personal visibility minimum higher than the legal one, and turn back early.

Fly with us

Cornerstone Flight Academy rents and trains at Redlands Municipal Airport year-round. If you'd like to fly a fire-season cross-country with an instructor, or talk through a route, we're glad to help.

Call or text (909) 330-4748, or visit flycornerstone.com.

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