Tired, I cut my ETOPS teeth on a certain short-lived longhaul fleet from a regional UK airport, and the Urban myth there was that Goose Bay had a very large US Military hospital. (Not that the young, free and single FO's would ever have attempted to influence a diversion decision based upon the availability of several hundred nurses, you do understand. The myth stated 4000 nurses, but even I couldn't believe that! )
Now, older, and with less hair, we all know to call Medlink because they have the gen, but it would be nice to have a general idea of what the facilities are. Which is why this topic is spot on; I can think of nothing worse than dropping the medical case off in Goose only to find the local surgery closed, some six-fingered bloke with a banjo under his parka, and a frozen tumbleweed blowing down the high street. Oh, yeah, and the casualty is lying in the road, thumbing a lift to Montreal.
Seriously; there is a strong argument given the nature of these fields and their use by almost every major operator as ETOPS diversion fields (read; allowing them to continue operating under the ETOPS rules by their existence) for a small financial consideration to be provided towards the provision of precision approach aids at all feasible runways.
I'm sure Mr Joe Public would not like to know that should some really nasty situation develop mid-Atlantic (the critical-fuel scenario depressurisation with engine failure for instance), the flight crew don't just have the problem itself weighing on their shoulders, but also a very high workload approach at the diversion field to accomplish. For instance, I have flown the sum total of, er, (let me think, yes)
NO backcourse approaches in anger in my career so far. The first one I would like to be somewhere tropical, 35 degrees and calm, on a summers day. And how likely is that to happen?
Sick Squid
[This message has been edited by Sick Squid (edited 03 May 2001).]