Having a little experience in the area, this might be helpfull.
I drove just south of the airport a couple of hours before this incident. !!!!e wx. Patchy freezing rain. Had my full and undevided attension trying to stay on the road.
Ottawa airport is well known to have strong winds aloft. I have seen 65 kts out of the west at the marker and light easterly winds on the surface. Strange local phenominon. Makes a stabilized approach to 07 a challenge but doable if you are ready for it. The increase in performance as you decend out of 500 ft agl often causes longish landings.
Spoke to others who landed jets in YOW earlier in the day. They commented that it was slippery but not nill braking. YOW field maintenance was having trouble keeping on top of the runway conditions despited repeated applications of deice chemical.
My guess from the comfort of my armchair.
Expected a runway in better shape than it was. Once commited it was too late to do anything but ride it out. They almost made it too.
Thankfully no one hurt. Embarasing for the crew and West Jet. Inconvenient for the pax.
We all do our best to evaluate runway and landing conditions. Sometime we get poor or no information and have to rely on our experience.
This sort of incident will happen from time to time as long as we fly in winter.
The Dog
Last edited by skidoodog; 22nd February 2008 at 12:47.