ATC Considerations
asva [Today, 09:38],
I sympathise with your concerns, but would ask you to recognise that very few professions have the results of their decisions (and skills) subjected to such close scrutiny.
No one on this Forum - I guess - knows the full scenario that this captain and copilot were faced with, so we are not in a position to criticize the decision-making process - whatever that was. All we can do is to criticize, in some cases with a degree of hypocrisy, the handling skills of the pilots. I say "pilots" because there is every possibility that - if the copilot was the one making the approach - the recovery was achieved by the captain taking over.
As far as the decision to make the first (videoed) approach on Rwy 23 is concerned, we don't know exactly what conditions the Tower was reporting at the time. With our 20-20 hindsight, it seems ill-advised.
There is another issue, however, that has already been touched on by previous postings. The captain is the person who has ultimate responsibility for the safety of his/her aircraft - not ATC.
Hamburg is a busy aerodrome with two runways which, unfortunately, are not independent, i.e., they cross one another. When the wind is (roughly) from the west, ATC likes to use Rwy 33 for departing aircraft; Rwy 23 for arrivals. An aeroplane taking-off on Rwy 33 soon crosses the intersection point with Rwy 23. From that moment, ATC can give landing clearance (permission) to the next aeroplane on the approach to Rwy 23. This normally works quite well, and enables more movements of arrivals and departures, than using only the into-wind runway. If there is a very strong wind between west and NNW, however, there is a problem for the landing traffic. As the wind increases, eventually one of the landing captains is going to "request" a landing on Rwy 33.
When this happens, in my experience, ATC will warn the captain that there will be a considerable delay before an approach will be possible. This puts pressure on the captain, particularly if he/she has not loaded plenty of extra fuel to allow for this. The delay is very difficult to estimate. From ATC's point of view, they know that, if every arriving aircraft has to use Rwy 33, there may be a gradual build-up of delays. This would make the situation worse for everyone, and itself lead to diversions.
So ATC has their problems - pilots have theirs. Again, in my experience, German Air-Traffic Controllers tend to take a very robust attitude to "requests" by pilots, if it is not a part of their game-plan.
Last edited by Chris Scott; 5th Mar 2008 at 10:10.
Reason: Syntax error