A long time ago, but I'm curious. Hope a Qantas 767 pilot can help!
In early 2005, I caught the "bus" from Sydney to Melbourne as self-loading freight. A little late leaving due to low cloud in ML & SY.
I believe we did the 16 ILS approach (hard to tell at night in cloud sitting behind the wing), when thrust and attitude changed to indicate aborting that approach. In the captain's words, some low passing cloud. I'm guessing they lost visual at the minima.
Now, given that visibility was otherwise OK (as far as I could tell) and it was a passing low cloud, I would have thought we'd go around and land next time after the clouds had passed through. But no, we went to Adelaide. Waited for the fuel truck man to patiently pump enough fuel in and then landed in ML 3 hours later. Why not try ML again if the clouds were only passing - not enough fuel for a second attempt and then diversion?
Why not divert to AV?
Captain was all very professional and helpful - let us use mobiles to tell those waiting for us in ML that we were in AD. Another 76 did the same.
Given the weather was known to be marginal, it would seem a weird policy not to carry enough fuel for a go-around. Or was it something else?
