The aircraft was covered in sea salt, Papa Gulf on stand 9 has engineers around it with its windows looking like they have a blanket of dirt on them, pilot is currently advising Cork Tower it's sea salt, I heard about such an incident in Shannon about a week back - This must be uncommon have never heard of such a problem before.
The pilots on 29M had ''extreme'' difficulty seeing on approach, fair play to them, outstanding pilots and a great calm attitude in an extremely dangerous situation. Kudos to you guys.
Aircraft declared a "PAN PAN".
This has certain implications as per the airport major accident plan.
Airport fire services deploy to prearranged positions on the field.
The "local" (county/city) fire brigade units will either go to the airport or move to a preordained position neat the airport as per the major accident plan.
Cork's emergency plans currently dictates that on a may-day call all available emergency services at the airport and throughout the county part-take in the emergency protocol. Standard.
29M declared, ''Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, standby.'' - 3 pans, meaning that the aircraft has an urgency but currently there is no immediate danger to the aircraft or passengers on-board. This was why I questioned the turnout of county emergency services, we had an Aer Lingus declare it before and basically the station just prepared to respond immediately, county were not called for assistance - I believe in this case, the urgency of the issue it was the right procedure to follow.
Jack, my gut feeling is that Confused ATCO is very much up to the mark and knows what he is on about very well.
I would not be so sure, just to point out to Confused ATCO, he is showing signs of confusion, I never once mentioned subsidies, but yet he goes off embarking on a tirade that I did - Please view my post (
http://www.pprune.org/8241112-post4737.html). What I was talking about, is a well known practice in the industry, for someone supposedly knowing what they talk about - They seem pretty new in the job.