Belfast ATC today

[FourTrails]

Thanks to both ATC units at BFS & BHD for your great service today during the LVP conditions. To Aldergrove for allowing us to juggle our sequencing due fuel quantities and to those at the City for accomodating us - seven easy's on stand was a good sight!:ok:

FT

[eastern wiseguy]

Hi Four Trails ...as one of the jugglers I will pass on your thanks to the rest of the team. As to all those Orange tails on the ramp at BHD .....:{ :{

Allmcc must be spinning in his anorak !!

[bmibabyfc]

fao four trails.....

yes maybe if all airlines were given the same priority into the city.......

As city closed for any diverts due to how many they accepted from easyjet..... maybe next time they wont be so lucky!!!

regards

bmibabyfc

p.s as you can probably understand we wernt given the city option!!

[FourTrails]

Hey baby dont throw the toys out....everybody had the same priority, it was just that many others arrived before you. An Easy did go to Dublin, others elsewhere - its just the 'Easy guys' worked well as a team, if only you could say the same for yourselves.

Good luck with Aviance, atleast you will now get priority there!

FT

[bmibabyfc]

hmm "easy guys" working well as a team - whatever!! and for the record baby work very well as a team, i will bring you back to the birth of bmibaby in 2002 when we had 7 a/c at ema and around 25 ground staff to handle it all! we worked very well together and if wasnt for that bmibaby would not be as BIG as it is now! - so reference your comment please think again........

regards

babyfc

[NWSRG]

Folks,

One question...are Easy and BMIBaby not equipped for auto-land in such conditions? Why the diversions?

[spanishflea]

Auto Land doesnt have any bearing over when an aircraft can land or not. Its the category of approach the aircraft, airport, and flight crew are certified for. If either of those three factors are below the proscribed minima then the aircraft cannot land and must find somewhere else, as happened yesterday at Belfast.

[orangetree]

The buses made it into BFS ok. 3b 75m, 3a 200m. Doesn't happen often but today it made the difference. Vive le bus ;)

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

And were then promptly stuck there!

I've not encountered fog like that ever. I tended to think that anything more than Cat 3a 200m was pretty much superfluous. I've changed my mind now.

A difficult day but the pax were by and large perfectly well behaved.

Cheers

WWW

[LTNman]

So why were they stuck? Was the RVR that bad?

[eastern wiseguy]

At one stage the irvr was 125 metres with the official met vis being 50 metres....and it stayed like that for over an hour ...never budged....poor old NJE was stuck on the ground waiting for 150 metres . The airbus had no problem! I have never seen holding at the BEL RINGA and MAGEE all on the same day .Hope today is quieter :O

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Yep - able to land but RVR below take off minima. It really was that thick. Nice trick though, if the BFS fleet had been Bus rather than Boeing at least they wouldn't have ended scattered around Ireland and when the fog suddenly cleared they would have been in place immediately. Definite advantage there for the Bus.

WWW

[Kestrel_909]

Strange day, it was clear here in the morning (about 15miles north of BFS) and started to become a bit foggy around 1400, when I got back outside again at 1500, the fog had set up camp, twas only about 50m here too.

At least it didn't hang around for 3 days like Nov/December!
7 Easys at BHD? That would have been a sight. :p

[NWSRG]

Sorry Gents,

Got my terminology slightly wrong...so what is the difference between the auto-land capability of the A319s and 737s?

[OLNEY 1 BRAVO]

A question if I may?

What happened to the much trumpeted Cat 3B capability of the 737-700's which I'm sure was accompanied by press releases claiming that easyJet had the first Cat 3B capable 737's?

[FlightDetent]

Nil. Both can auto-land on CAVOK day. But the buses have a more redundant design that also allows for guided roll-out after touch down. So, the weather minima for buses autoland are lower than that of Boeings. On a certain day the RVR could become too low for Boeings (no extra equipment fitted) and still be fine for Buses. Airbus is CAT IIIb, Boeing CAT IIIa (for A320 and B737 families)

FD
(the un-real)

[BFS/BHD]

If anyone's interested a few of the regs i caught on the scanner were:
G-EZKA
G-EZJV
G-EZJG

There was also an Air WALES ATR in from Cardiff - preparing for the future:p

[strafer]

Tech question - I was a pax on the first BMI LHR-Belfast City flight yesterday morning and the first bit of ground I saw was the runway as we landed! The landing was perfectly normal, but the braking seemed more vigorous than usual. Was this maybe because wheel brakes weren't used and reverse thrust more so than normal?

[Tom the Tenor]

Lucky so and so's in Belfast with your CAT 3 this and CAT3 that! :{

At least Cork had no diversions this January compared to 2005 which is a plus!

[Torque2]

Strafer:
Exactly the opposite, reverse thrust remains the same but a higher level of auto-braking is used ie medium instead of low setting so you feel the braking kick in earlier and more deceleration.

[strafer]

Thanks Torque2.

I'm still unsure why one would brake harder in those conditions though. It seemed to me (and I know that passengers perceptions are often wildly awry) that we landed just after the numbers, so would have had plenty of runway available.

[LTNman]

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/story/25846

Passengers whose flight from Malaga was forced to land at Belfast City Airport because of yesterday's thick fog were left reeling after they were subsequently forced to travel to Belfast International Airport to go through Customs.

The easyJet flight originally scheduled to land at Aldergrove circled above Belfast for 15 minutes yesterday afternoon before a decision was taken to land in east Belfast.

Although many onboard had to travel-to Belfast International Airport to collect cars, others were frustrated that Customs facilities were not made available at Belfast City Airport.

News Letter reporter Lesley Walsh was on board the flight which left Spain at 10.35am and was just one of several diverted in recent days because of the adverse weather conditions.

"Some people, such as those who lived in Belfast or had small children with them, were angry that they weren't allowed to leave Belfast City Airport but were bussed to Belfast International to go through Customs there," she said. "People's frustration was even more apparent when all the two Customs officers did at Aldergrove was get on the buses and check passports."

People thought it would have been much easier on everyone concerned if Customs Officer had travelled to the City Airport and saved everyone having to travel out to Aldergrove.

On Sunday night, another easyJet flight from Malaga landed at Dublin Airport instead of Belfast International Airport, again because of the fog.

Nobody at Belfast City Airport, which because it deals exclusively with domestic flights has no Customs, was available for comment last night.

Budget airline easyJet has moved to reimburse UK passengers who were charged hundreds of pounds after their flight home from Switzerland had been cancelled by bad weather, the BBC reports.

Passengers due to fly back from Geneva to Northern Ireland yesterday were informed that Belfast International Airport had been forced to shut due to excessive fog.

They were promised free tickets if they took an alternative route via Luton but ended up being charged to the tune of £600 for the second leg.

The no-frills airline told The BBC that it would reimburse those left out of pocket.

But many passengers feel aggrieved by the way they were treated.

"The duty manager told us the flight would be free and we would get a free transfer. But when we arrived in Luton - after three to four hours of waiting to speak to anybody - we were informed that we would have to pay for those flights back to Belfast," explained easyJet passenger Simon Cole.

"Four of us are £600 poorer off now. We are disappointed by the lack of information when we arrived in Luton and no accommodation - we have been trying to sleep on the floor of the airport."

In November, it was revealed that only six out of 1,347 UK passengers who had submitted claims for late or cancelled flights had been successful, since new EU laws were introduced last year.

[Torque2]

Strafer:

The landing would have been an autoland done by the automatics..ie autopilot. When this is done there is a variable amount of flare effect due to different factors such as aircraft weight and type and runway slope etc, so the aircraft may touch down in an area of about 400m but on the centreline of the runway, it then applies the brakes on its own according to which autobrake setting you have chosen, reverse thrust is manually selected.
It may seem basic but it is not sensible to have a high speed on the ground towards the latter part of the runway because you have to transition from autobraking and seeing the turn off at some stage, in fact the amount of Runway Visual Range required for the landing is affected by your final speed in the taxying segment and the rollout guidance available by the aircraft type.

The fact that you touched down almost on the numbers is coincidental but I'm sure someone will care to be much more technical and explain things in detail. Anyway, hope it helps answer some of your questions.

Cheers

[strafer]

Thanks Torque2 - very helpful.