winter ops CPH
Hello Gents,
Today, I had a nightmare flight out of CPH!
Having a slot and also requiring deicing.
During preflight preparations determined rwy 04R being in use with friction qoefficients above .6. Finally after deicing we taxied out to the runway, however, friction coefficients were now .30 .22. 11.
In our documentation that equals medium/poor, poor and poor. Once again, to our documentation (and I stress, to our documentation) this is not allowed. We noticed 04L being cleaned and asked ATC how long before 04L would be available. ATC stated about 10 minutes. Long story, but due to the airport layout and operational limitations, it took us more than 40 minutes ( on top of taxiing to 04R to begin with) to get to 04L. By this time we had run out of the extra fuel we had taken and were now below min TO fuel and unfortunately had to taxi back in to refuel! We finally made it out!!
However, and this is my question, several airlines, mainly body mounted engined aircraft did take off before us and after us on the runway with the reported friction coefficients of .30, .22, .11.
One guy even took off from an intersection 1/3 down the runway!!
Having landed the evening before with similar braking coefficients we definitely experienced severe reduced braking action
Definitely not wanting to critise other airlines, I wonder if there is such a difference in operating procedures or capability in aircraft to deal with such reduced braking action?
Having great commercial pressure too leave on time(many connections) we still decided that there was no way we could legally(if not common sense) to depart on a runway with braking action poor. It was somewhat suprising to see that so many airlines did depart.
I know, 99% you take off without a glitch, but the one time you have to abort, you are f@#$%%^!!
So, once again my question? Is there so much difference in airline operating procedure or type specific procedure?
Thanks in advance