When a Met man is talking about past WX he's a scientist, when he's talking about future WX he's reading tea leaves.

A TREND or METAR with trend attached is basically just what we call a TTF or now a TAF3, with a shorter useful period of 2 hours instead of 3. As you already know having TREND requires a MET observer so it's not going to happen outside of places that already have TAF3 so it's really irrelevant, and the TAF3 offers better coverage anyway. If mine sites wish to pay for a met observer to sit and watch clouds, fair enough, get them approved to issue TAF3s. But without any benefit form it such as lower minima for CAT 1+ and so on, it wont have any safety implications and the trend can always be wrong as much as any TAF. It can just be more rapidly amended, which means nothing if you are already en-route nearing destination when it happens.

All this talk about reliability of forecasts is a bit redundant in this case as we don’t know what the destination forecast was at the time of departure.

The historical METAR data has been published but has anyone found the TAF data that would’ve been valid before the incident flight?

That is hilarious.


In other news, apparently it is perfectly legal to carry an alternate when not technically required, who knew?

PS Fuel was clearly not an issue at the first approach if they had fuel for three more.

I love the presumption of wrong doing or incompetence by the crew on this forum. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that because Network crew are paid less then therefore the standards are lower. Apropos, the sky gods at QF could never get caught like this…..

like, never land in fog… or continue with an unstable approach…. Or forget to put the wheels down….

glass houses maybe?

I thought the ‘P’ here was for Professional

I’m not sure about the sky-gods you speak of, but mainline Qantas pilots would always divert after the 2nd missed approach.

I think the whole point of the discussion is what lead to them not doing that though? How do you know that after the second approach there wasn’t something else that then gave them no good options? Are you telling me that Mainline pilots are immune to all other factors that could play out and put them in this situation?

I’ve been in my second missed approach before to then have Centre announce literally as I was still climbing, that all of my possible alternates had just had their TAF’s amended to be no better than my destination or even worse, and the METARS indicating below minimas. Now I’m stuck with only one option should a 3rd approach not be successful. And that was departing with all legally required fuel plus some.

It happens buddy, so don’t bring your “we’re better than you” attitude on here and tell us that mainline wouldn’t have had it happen to them. It just makes you look like even bigger dicks when it does.

The problem is also a lack of suitable alternates within a reasonable distance. When flying in some countries there are so many airports around that you need to reduce the range on the navigation display to be able to see them, with 160nm range the display is too cluttered to read. An additional 20 mins of fuel brings many more airports into your range of options where as in remote areas of Australia a substantial increase in fuel is required to bring even a single airport into consideration.

A thorough review of remote area operations is required, I'm sure the pilots flying to Antarctica aren't using standard regs.

Newman, Solomon, Boolgeeda, Eliwana, West Angeles, Coondewanna, Barimunya, Cloudbreak, Christmas Creek, Ginbata, Iron Bridge, Port Hedland, Karratha, Onslow and probably Learmonth all within 20 minutes diversion time.

Although not all their historic TAFs are available online I’m fairly sure the entire Pilbara wasn’t socked in below minima that morning

How about we just wait for the report, at the end of the day they landed safely and then seemingly self reported the incident.

What makes you think it’s ‘sky gods at QF’ that are being critical here? :rolleyes:

Personally I was wondering what else was going on that lead to this one and hoping to learn something myself. Though I am surprised that we managed to get to 5 pages before this became a d!ck measuring contest.

Why? We have been operating under these conditions for decades! How many accidents have been attributed to these lack of alternates and remoteness?

We've been lucky that the holes haven't lined up in the Swiss cheese yet and nothing major has happened since the Fitzroy Creek F28 incident 50 years ago.

Captain Reg Adkins had a bit to say about the issue of alternates in his book "I Flew for MMA."

​​​​​​https://www.pprune.org/pacific-gener...ago-today.html

I recall many years ago a QF B737 landed at Ayers Rock and promptly lost hydraulics to the nose wheel steering. No alternate on a -300.
More recently a QF B737-800 landing at Darwin lost both nose wheel systems when in the flare when a perfectly aimed bird strike took out both hydraulic lines in the nose wheel well. Was pretty interesting for a while for aircraft holding at Howard Springs while the organised a tug and a cleanup team to clean up the spilled hydraulic fluid.
Most recently a Virgin B737 overran the runway in Hobart. If you weren’t carrying Launceston you were in a world of pain.
It happens.
Krismiler is correct.
The Regis. are archaic.
Just rolling the dice.

Is there much traffic into these single runway mining sites ? Would you follow another aircraft inside 30 mins regularly? Could they get a piece of machinery to the airport to tow ( bulldoze ) a disabled aircraft off the runway if required ?

NO

Many years ago I was in the circuit in Canberra when an Aerocommanders gear folded on one side on touchdown. Came to rest at the runway intersection. Nobody would touch it until insurance issues were sorted out. I kid you not. The answer is simple just carry an alternate.not that hard most of the time. The difference between standard fuel to Hobart and carrying Launceston is hardly worth arguing about. Check Captains might argue the toss at flight planning or at debriefing on a line check. But never met one yet who will tell you straight up that its a bad idea. They are company parrots and forced to argue against some things that the know are a bad idea , like fuel policy. Answer? Grow some, and use your judgement.

The old bulldoze the disabled aircraft off the runway myth. Ask yourself who "they" are, who are going to take on the responsibility of arranging the purchase of and payment for the hire of a bulldozer and operator. Then ask yourself who is then going to be responsible for the subsequent runway inspection to ensure no debris is left. Finally, ask yourself what would be the minimum time that all this would happen. The airport will just be NOTAMed as unserviceable due disabled aircraft and anyone airborne would just have to figure it out for themselves. If you don't have the fuel to go somewhere else then it is not the airport operator's problem.

Ill fly with you .

Love to but I’m retired.
Had some kind phone calls from F/O’s when I did.
I know all F/Os have their personal list of Captains they dread seeing at sign-on. Very often due to , but not limited to, Issues such as fuel ordering.
Nothing worse than sitting on the edge of your seat every sector on a multi day pattern. Easy fixed if youre a Captain happy to assume Command and exercise your judgement. I’m old fashioned. I still think it part of the job.

Agree with the great sentiments of this thread! Fuel gives us all options and it’s so nice to have that when things go wrong. Also agree with the plug to “I Flew for MMA” by Reg. A great book which gives a wonderful insight into the history of flying in WA.