Originally Posted by
Ixixly
Compressor, I'd posit that it's a lot easier and cheaper to deploy some good quality Webcams around aerodromes than it is to have a Unicom everywhere which makes them extremely valuable in my mind. AWIS is great but it tells you what's happening right there, where as a good webcam can help fill in some blanks about where stuff is actually happening. It's all extra data really to help complete the picture but in the end it's about the Pilot being able to take that data and use it wisely of course and neither is a substitute for the other.
They have their value, but in a fast changing tropical environment when you’re trained to shoot an approach to 200ish feet I still don’t think that is that useful. When do you look at it? Before departure, 90 mins ago? At the IAF? You want the data for the last two hundred feet which is as you say is the AWIS.
If this was a VFR into IMC accident, a webcam could have made a difference and they might have never get off the ground and just gone to the pub. But unless it’s fog all around, a TEMPO +RA TAF shouldn’t stop an IFR commercial pilot going (caveat that I haven’t seen the TAF for yesterday)..
Again, I’m not deriding webcams. I’m not sure of their relevance in this accident. It reminds me of my RFDS days. Returning to base from the big smoke I’d sometimes get the nervous doc or nurse back at base call me to say the weather is atrocious - fierce rain and storms. and i should delay returning (about an hour flight). They never understood when I’d say thanks, that’s great news, I’m leaving now ... knowing full well it’d clear by the time I got there. It never failed me.
Sheepy - they were 5000m+ from the runway.