Originally Posted by
Old Akro
BIG call, especially from a well lit air-conditioned office.
There are a couple of big differences between Mildura & Norfolk Is. Mildura is as flat as the s@#t carters hat. Basically any aircraft in a controlled descent will land in a survivable manner. And there's only scrub at the end of the runway if you over-run. Norfolk Is has rising terrain that might not be survivable if you tried the same trick, but landed early. And its not so friendly if you over-run.
And it was overwhelmingly likely that the fog was not on the ground at Mildura (the pilots had an expectation of breaking out of cloud below minima but before touch down - the Norfolk Is case didn't have this expectation) and the Mildura pilots had radio coms with people on the ground observing, both recently landed aircraft and others. I don't recall that being the case for Norfolk Is.
The wind at Mildura was dead calm. Once again, I don't really recall, but I'm not sure you would expect the same from Norfolk Is.
The fog at Mildura may have been thin enough to afford some view of the land or intimation of how thick the fog was. It occurred mid afternoon on a basically fine & sunny day.
The fog at Norfolk Is was probably sea fog. And it was night. The pilot would not have had even the faintest indication of where the ground was.
As I recall the pilot elected to ditch because he felt the survival prospects were better than a crash landing on the ground. At night in unforecast weather, I don't envy him that decision.
But apart from the stark differences in the topography and the overrun, land short and lateral excursion risks, time of day, meteorological conditions and availability of authoritative information from multiple local sources about the conditions on the ground at the runways, the circumstances are analogous.