Perth is a potentially dangerous place from the point of view of unpredictible weather and poor forecasting.I NEVER go there without Kalgoolie fuel.A lesson proven above.
There's the rub. It sounds like they had KG fuel when they first arrived. The trick is to decide when enough is enough. To have a few goes
then go to KG would have meant arriving with a whole lot more fuel. Where do you draw the line? If 6 aircraft ahead have already done GAs, should you divert without having a go? If you hold and then have a go, will you have enough fuel to then divert? Are the conditions going to improve? Probably not. Given the conditions aren't going to change (albeit they're pretty rough) do we just keep doing GAs because the Ops Manual says you must if you get a windshear warning? WS warning systems are OK but are they designed for this sort of weather, or the shear you get from thunderstorms/microbursts? When did we all do max-crosswind/mod turb landings (I mean a few of them in a row to get them down-pat) in the SIM? How confident are we hand-flying in such conditions? Could we predict this situation from the available forecast?
I must admit I am surprised ATC even mentioned the shorties. PEA 05 wouldn't have been any good as it's even closer to the hills than Perth.
Lots of juicy stuff to consider.
METARs