Originally Posted by Rockhound
I still find the suggestion that he was circling to land on Rwy 17 difficult to accept. A tailwind of 10-15 knots straight down the runway should present no difficulties for a 737.
A sub-2000m gravel runway in poor weather with up to 13kts of downwind in a 737-200, which most probably has a Flight Manual 10kt tailwind limit (as other early model 737s). I would not class that as a "no difficulties" approach.
Also interesting was the presence of the other aircraft. While the timings are not clear, if an aircraft had gone missing, I would have thought it prudent to hold somewhere out of the way until the whereabouts of the missing aircraft had been resolved. It might have had a radio failure and be attempting further approaches. It would certainly load me up knowing there was another aircraft doing instrument approaches in the opposite direction to mine.