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Old 25th December 2002 | 08:15
  #8 (permalink)  
HEATHROW DIRECTOR
 
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 8,266
Likes: 1
From: Berkshire, UK
<<if you don't believe me there is a very nasty airprox report (the airprox was nasty not the report-u know what I mean) from about 5 years ago(ATCO2 may be able to be more precise) from an a/c going around in fog-miss distance as I recall was in the order of 100ft no sighting.>>

I am sure that a good many ATCOs could relate plenty of tales of aeroplanes going around well below 100 ft - absolutely nothing to it. I've seen planes go around after they've actually touched the runway in LVPs - saw it on the ASMI, gave it the usual "landed at 38, vacate right on the greens" and the guy said "We're going around"... No incident.. nothing. Low go-arounds are one thing; airproxes are another and there is no reason to suppose that LVP go-arounds will end in airproxes if crews and ATC get things right. Given a bad foggy morning at Heathrow you could get a dozen or more go-arounds.

What always amazed me about LVPs was exactly what depended on the measurement of cloudbase. Maybe things have changed since I was a met observer, but in those days a lot of it was eyeball because the cloudbase measuring light was fixed in one vertical direction so if there was lower cloud elsewhere one had to guess it. I hope it's more accurate nowadays because one hell of a lot depends on it. Not long before I retired we had 100ft cloud base at Heathrow and one pilot said he needed 110 ft!!!! Now how on earth can one measure that?
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