" ...only in America..." - not so, BEags, I've seen a very similar mess in another prestigious carrier elsewhere, nowhere near the USA. I've also seen some even bigger fiascos amongst the bright-eyed lads at Brize, 10 Sqn and 216...nobody's perfect. Seems like you were just unable to refrain from having yet another jab at the US....
We Brits are becoming
very tiresome on PPRUNE these days, as Danny recently stated in an editorial...we have a political axe to grind, it seems, and we're letting it cloud our writings. Take your frustrations out by writing to Dubya, not lambasting your fellow aviators. It's very childish.
Back to the thread...
I presume this was a 747-400, CAT3B capable (crew qual permitting), perhaps the winds were out of limits for an autoland.
It might have been sensible to make an early decision to divert en-route to Minneapolis to pick up more fuel and a fresh crew, depending how far north their great circle routing was....
If their routing was from high latitudes, there's actually not that many good alternates into SEA if you're weight/fuel critical. BFI will suffer from the same conditions as Seatac...PDX is quite a ways further on, YVR is a different country....Everett, maybe...
I'm a cr@p monday-morning QB, anyway.
Whoops, sorry, Danny, you posted just before me...
Happy New Year !!