I think what the IAA report demonstrates is that the need to declare an emergency (correctly identified & complied with. . . how many others not mentioned that night - wonder why ? perhaps just crossed their fingers & scraped in with less than minimum OR flew the approach to MAD & landed in the middle of a TS, isn't that rather more worrying ? ) has been used by an unscrupulous bunch of hypocritical political honchos to try & bolster their agenda. Particularly distasteful given the alleged history of the head of the agency concerned.
The Monday Morning Quarterbacks can now have a field day saying how they would have made an earlier decision etc etc. It is of course a very mobile/dynamic situation and very difficult to actually assess/determine exactly how it would have all panned out if you had been there on the night (most of us evidently weren't)
Wholly agree, in that I "like to think" (given the actual weather,volume of traffic present likely to be in the same mess as me , & the well known & documented chaos that appears to have been at least partly present in VLC /MAD ) that I may have made the Div call a little earlier, however that is supposition on my part & indeed their decision was fundamentally sound, the need to declare an emergency as much attributable to less then optimum vectoring/sequencing as being a late decision.
Whilst in broad agreement that this whole episode does not reflect too favourably on Ryanairs (or most other companies ) obsessive fuel policy, all 3 Commanders here appear to have taken ,& thought through the reasons for doing so, extra fuel. It is not stated if the failure to receive updated wx at STN had any bearing on that aircrafts fuel uplift, but, you have to say it has mainly been an exercise in mud-slinging by the snakes that pass for politicians.
Never too keen to trumpet a victory for MOL, but when his adversaries are the low-life that passes for "leaders" in most countries, I prefer to side with him & his pilots particularly as we now see that everything was indeed in order. The flights I have taken recently in Spain seem a little less well subscribed, hope that is due to a seasonal lull rather than loss of public confidence due to all this bull. I imagine he is looking at some legal action against them for putting in the public mind that there was some justification to suspend his operating licence, difficult not to wish him well in that.
Last edited by captplaystation; 20th Sep 2012 at 15:00.