Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 65; Flight Crew Total 6600; Flight Crew Type 1800
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness
Conflict Ground Conflict; Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Vehicle; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Took Evasive Action
Human Factors
After working hard with dispatch and coordinating with a hospital; I was repositioning from ZZZ to pick up a critical patient in ZZZ1 to fly to ZZZ2. There was a lot of emphasis to get airborne and en route as fast as possible to meet an ETA. Taxing out it was snowing and we had 1 1/2 miles of visibility and a 2300 feet ceiling and 2 inches of light snow on the runway. After announcing that I was taxing out and later announcing on Unicom that I was taking the runway I heard no reply over Unicom/CTAF. We had blowing snow and a 6051 foot runway; after putting the throttles up and rapidly approaching V1; I saw a set of head lights from a snow plow that had just turned around at the end of the runway I made a quick call telling him to hold his position with no reply. The plow driver saw me and pulled over. He had entered the runway mid field and I could not see him due to the snow he was kicking up and the fact that the county snow plow lacked good lighting. I lifted off mid field using a soft field technique to avoid any plowed rows of snow. I accelerated and comfortably flew over the snow plow who was waiting at the end of the runway. There were no NOTAMs for snow removal and I wouldn't think they would be out plowing for such a small amount of snow. I believe after I taxied out past our hangar the plow past behind me at a 90 deg angle on a taxi way that meets the runway mid field he then headed away from me so we both had our backs to each other. I did not want to become contaminated with snow on the wings so emphases was to go. Looking down the runway I thought I saw a set of tire tracks on the runway from the night pilot who stated he drove the runway. I feel if the plow had a radio with the CTAF frequency available and was making calls this would not have had happened. The county looks at this airport like it is just another duty to clear another section of concrete of snow. We have a base located at ZZZ and county is trying to plow the runway more often due to the high amount of flights that we are doing out of this uncontrolled airport. If there was a training program in place for plow drivers or if we had some company personnel watching the runway with a radio or I just elected to have higher personal weather minimums this would not have happened; an active NOTAM would have helped too.
Air taxi Captain reported that on takeoff from ZZZ when it was snowing he noticed a snow plow at the departure end of the runway.