Originally Posted by
excrab
I’ve landed there six times in the last three months, all night landings. In good visibility, if anything, it’s easier than in daylight, as the PAPIS are clearly visible from further out. You fly a three degree path, on the PAPIS ( I use the FPV as an additional help ). Below 1600 feet it’s a visual approach, so you’re referencing instruments and outside, and I’m sure that if you had VNAV guidance you’d be scanning that too, you wouldn’t be eyes inside only. You stay on the three degree slope all the way down, and you land halfway along the touch down zone.
I’ve been going there since 2010, always in 737 variants, not an Airbus, but I’ve never felt any desire, or need, day or night, to get low on the approach like those guys did. It’s a sloping runway, and the NDB approach is offset, but it’s not that hard. You’ve done the performance, if the sums have worked you land where your SOPs tell you to. If you can’t, generally if the runway is wet, you take fuel to hold at Scopoles VOR until it dries out, or you divert. It’s only dangerous if you make it dangerous.
Kudos, excrab, Special authorizations on the basis of competency meets the system safety requirements, if it removes the risk, and there are indeed sufficient crews that can demonstrate competency then that is adequate, but, the scores of happy snaps of aircraft not flying an on-PAPI approach suggests that this is not the current state of play. If the insurers get antsy, then that sort of restriction is appropriate mitigation. What is not acceptable is to keep getting happy snaps of approaches that don't seem to meet the requirements to be described to be safe.