I'll make one thing clear from the start, I am a 216 Sqn Air Eng so yes I'm going on the defensive. The Tristars being used for this flight are actually quite reliable, I've been doing this route every week for the last 6 months and have only delayed once and that was due to Kabul refusing us due to a lack of fuel (see point 1 below), there is nothing you can do about metal in a tire except buy us some spares and pre-position them (we can't carry tyres and jacks in a flyaway pack, have you seen the size of them) instead of making us look like fools or actually get rid of all the fod that is knocking around that supposedly international sh*thole. There are two main problems with flying into Kabul:-
1. The amount of fuel you can uplift is limited to 10,000ltr (check the NOTAMs). This causes us to reduce passenger loads to carry more fuel, we are often forced to fly half empty. This is not an RAF problem but a NATO one.
2. The second point is we do not have GPS navigation for the approach (we have GPS but are not R-NAV compliant). We have to obey the minima. Again check the NOTAMS the ILS is unserviceable and has been for some time, so is the approach RADAR (so no PAR's) and the VOR/DME is very unreliable. Kabul has lots of big mountains, it is very high up, effecting performance (we can not operate Perf A out of there) and the weather is starting to get quite poor.
We do our best to get in and out everyday we can, we are quite proud of what we do and try to do our best for our passengers, we want to get you home, It's no fun having 120 pi**ed off people sat behind you.