PPRuNe Forums - DUNDEE

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Was merely asking as a PPL usually operating from a location slightly to the West.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bad bear (Post 9729352)

its interesting to see that 2 professional pilots just blunder through an active parachuting site, they could so easily have hit the parachutist. Should professional pilots not be forced to carry and look at the same 1;500,000 chart that every other airspace user is legally obliged to carry?

Agree entirely bad bear. It says a lot about Flybe's Flight Ops department that they did not equip their flight crews with a departure procedure that ensured that all deps from 27 either got positive RT confirmation from Dundee Tower that Errol wasn't active, or took an early left turn to remain clear of the notified area, or if that wasn't possible (e.g. because of other traffic joining downwind) climbed straight ahead until clear to the west of Errol. Equally, it seems bizarre that although the Errol parachuting site is now shown on the Dundee instrument approach charts (it wasn't when this airprox happened), there's still no mention of Errol or parachuting in the AIP text for Dundee.

You would think that in all the time that went in to researching this route that someone would have known there was parachuting activity happening within the wider area? I just don't understand how this only affected AMS and not the STN service nor any other commercial services which DND has seen over the years. Surely Loganair will dip their toe in again as it proved a successful route.

The AMS service was operated by FlyBe, the STN service by Loganair aircraft and crew. The aircraft were painted in FlyBe colours.

While Loganair were happy to fly visual approaches to the non instrument runway 27, FlyBe were hampered by their ops manual which stated that they must use an instrument runway for initial approach. This meant they were spending up to 20 minutes flying round in busy class G airspace when the wind favoured RWY 27.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dont overfil (Post 9731099)

FlyBe were hampered by their ops manual which stated that they must use an instrument runway for initial approach

but did not specify an IFR departure procedure off that runway. Go figure!

It will have been an IFR departure but only on a procedural service and with no SID available for their route. By the time they contacted the radar unit they already had two air proxes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by edi_local (Post 9729557)

The load factors were around 80% at the time the route was unjustifiably pulled.

The fact they kept on bussing people to EDI and back for months meant there was a demand. If it was such a weak route they would not have gone to that length or forked out the expense of keeping AMS and EDI slots nor would they have provided the transport or refreshments for the affected passengers. They would have simply cancelled the offer of DND-AMS altogether and refunded the money.

or it might have had something to do with the government subsidy they were getting.

Which stopped when they didn't serve DND anymore. They didn't get any subsidy payments once they moved to EDI as that airport already had 2 (much cheaper, more frequent) AMS connections.

Is this the largest aircraft to have landed at Dundee?

Quote:

VIDEO: RAF A400M ATLAS PILOTS TEST OUT SHORT LANDING ABILITIES AT DUNDEE AIRPORT

https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/f...undee-airport/

For those interested in the technical side of things, the A400M has an undercarriage designed for soft-field operations so it spreads its load over a bigger area and thus has a low ACN for such a large aircraft. The PCN at Dundee is just 26 and doesn't specify whether the pavement is flexible or rigid or what strength the subgrade is. Nevertheless, the A400M was probably well inside this limit for this training op.

There's some more on 70 Squadron's Twitter;

https://twitter.com/70sqna400m?lang=en