It was winter in Connecticut. We had a regular run where we would fly the Cessna 172 up to Bradley Airport (about 30 minutes away), meet the United flight from Chicago, pick up a big envelope of negatives and fly them back to Chester. A large printing business was located nearby and they would print out all the Time and Sports Illustrated issues for the New England region, using the negatives we picked up. If the weather was bad then we had to drive it, and nobody liked doing that. On this particular night it wasn't bad right now, but was supposed to get bad later. So Jason and I decided to fly up there together and hopefully beat the snowstorm.
We picked up the large envelope and took off for Chester, Jason flying and me in the right seat working the radios. It had just started to snow. Fifteen minutes later we were flying through a heavy blizzard and in the Cessna when you flew in snow the navigation radios wouldn't work. They just couldn't get a signal through all that snow. So I called Bradley Approach Control and said our radios weren't working and we'd like to come back to Bradley. Zhimba, our boss, was going to be furious! Bradley replied "Sorry, Bradley Airport just closed due to the snow. State your intentions." Oh crap, this was just getting worse. We discussed it briefly and then told them we'd like a radar approach to New Haven, which was not too far away from Chester, down on the shore of Long Island Sound. He said OK, but his radar wasn't near there and couldn't get us down very low at that range. Great.
We flew south towards New Haven when suddenly, down below, there was this hole in the cloud and we saw an interstate connecting with another interstate. Aha! That was I-91 meeting I-95 on the edge of New Haven! We knew exactly where we were! So we quickly cancelled our flight plan and Jason began a tight spiraling descent through the hole. We got below the cloud base a few hundred feet above the ground. We then headed up I-95, watching the signs for exit 63, Killingworth Road. We found it, turned left and followed it up to the liquor store. You see, there is an instrument approach into Chester Airport that comes in from the southwest direction. We'd flown this approach in clear daylight many, many times, and we knew that just three miles from the airport on the approach you flew right over this liquor store on Killingworth Road. So we flew up the road to the liquor store, turned right to 064 degrees, and a minute later we flew across the airport. We flew around the pattern at 400' and landed to the north. We taxied to the ramp, handed the driver the envelope and went about securing the airplane for the night. Just then Tom drove up in his station wagon. He lived in a house at the end of the runway. "How'd it go?" he asked.
"Oh fine, fine. No problem," we replied, focusing on tying the airplane down.
"Weather ok?"
"Yea, well, some snow you know. But no problem." He stood there for a a while. Nobody spoke. Finally he said "Well OK then. Get it tied down and get on home." He got back in his car and drove off. We knew what had happened. See, Tom Zhimba knew everybody in aviation in New England. I mean everybody. When we cancelled our flight plan and spiraled down through the clouds, the controller had called Tom at home to tell him his boys were off radar and flying around down low in this blizzard somewhere (our chief pilot Bruno confirmed this later). Oh yes, he knew, but we never admitted to an adventure. That fact that we had found the airport and landed safely was good enough for him.
