Windshear reporting - please help
I'm interested to know how your airfield reports windshear. Have flown into the same major UK airport late on twice in the last week and both times the ATIS has reported windshear but with no further information.
Both times specifics were requested and no further information was given/available.
Now I know pilot reports on windshear can be as variable as their avoiding action for CBs/a bit of rain but for certain if people report plus or minus ten knots then this is significant.
My home base ATIS always provides (1) Pos / neg (2) Strength of reported shear (3) the altitude at which it was experienced.They continue to verify the presence of shear by asking subsequent landing aircraft for reports and update the ATIS accordingly.
This is useful as we change our final approach target speed (and sometimes even the flap setting for landing) depending on strength of the shear.
Met wise there are three major things which aircraft are not certified to deal with.
1. Extreme (as opposed to severe) turbulence (associated with severe rotors/super cells/ funnel cloud etc).
2. Severe icing (associated with freezing rain / super cooled water droplets etc).
3. Severe windshear. Whilst this kind of severe windshear normally is restricted to major continental land masses (US etc) it does happen in Europe once in a while. Last night I had plus or minus ten knots...seriously not good.
I'm not trying to sound alarmist but it appears that this particular field (or at least that late shift) has too casual an approach to one of the most significant threats we face.
Tin hat on.