Network F100 busting minima, Paraburdoo
 

Ouch.. 4 attempts.

4 goes- makes you wonder if they had much gas to go anywhere else

Probably not after 4 attempts, so rather than running out of gas, they do the old ‘flying it to the runway trick’. Virgin and Qantas got away with it at Mildura, but they were caught out by unforecast fog. Justifying it after 4 attempts (any holding as well?) will be a little harder. I have no idea about the RPT arrangement here, was it a mining run/charter? They mightn’t be too happy either.

What is the purpose of the Minimum Descent Altitude?

To avoid getting mentioned on Pprune

Torukmacto - how true! But, hang about: elderly PPruners may recall a dramatic low fuel incident with an MMA F28 in the 70s in that region of WA.

Wonder if the inquiry will reveal any similarities?

It’s there so the Coroner doesn’t talk about you in the past tense

Avherald info here:

Incident: Network Australia F100 at Paraburdoo on Nov 22nd 2021, descent below minimum without visual reference

Multiple CAVOK alternates in the area at the time it seems

I might be missing something here. How do the powers know they where not visual at minima ????

I imagine through the crew reporting it

maybe the FO snitched

What ever happened to that famous CRM phrase “This will be our little secret"?

Yawn. It clearly didn’t spear in… moving right along…

I had a quick look at the charts and the approaches seem to have minimums of 500 to 600 feet with broken 800 reported in the metar. I would not be surprised if they had ground contact during the first approach and were fairly confident they would get in at the next attempt. Weather actually seems to have got worse certainly as far as visibility (in light showers of rain) is concerned during the further hour they spent trying to land, which was probably not what they were expecting in the Pilbara in summer. I suspect very few of us have been in this position given most company´s procedures quite rightly limit the number of missed approaches before diverting. With hindsight I am sure they wish they had made some other choices. But in a just culture self reporting usually limits punitive consequences.

Would the imminent Part 121 Alternate requirements (had they been in place) have prevented this event?

Normally the ops manual gives you two approaches before you have to divert, unless there is a substantial improvement in the weather. To be sure of this I would want a report from a qualified met observer on the ground rather than making my own assessment.

They may have painted themselves into a corner by going below minimum divert fuel and then having no option but to land.

I blame Alan Joyce...

Krismiler ,Remote WA is the Wild West. Very few Control Towers , fewer qualified observers and even fewer precision approaches and NO requirement for mandatory alternates for single runways. RNP has improved things but mostly its all pretty basic. Third world really.
Not hard to get into trouble especially if you are a true believer in company fuel policy. Personally I spent most of my career ignoring it WA.

Several 2000mt sealed runways within 100nm and 20 within 200nm. Paraburdoo is far from isolated, all the nearby mine strips and then Newman at 115nm, Karatha, Hedland and Onslow all just over 150nm. With 4 attempts it seems more a fixation on getting in rather than looking for somewhere else to go, that's if what was said earlier about all the surrounding areas being CAVOK is true. After 2 or so attempts people tend to notice a jet floating around doing circles, so it gets attention, even the passengers will put in reports if they thought something was amiss.

Newman an Alternate ? Really ? No Tower. No Met. Observer. No better Approach options. You are proving my point.

I think the only point you are proving is that you have no idea what you are talking about. Having a tower is not an alternate requirement. Newman has a 2000m runway for an F100 easily to land, it has ATS to ground level, it has several approach options from VOR to RNAV/GNSS, it has fuel for a top up and then another go at the destination. I'm not sure what you would regard as a suitable alternate other than return to Perth? Not sure where you get it has no met, it has a cat B TAF service with METAR.

We are also talking about a situation where an emergency was possible due to low fuel state so PPR and all that is out the window, not a standard planned diversion due to weather where you have to book a slot.

The only thing we have no idea about, unless there was what was the relative weather at each point, which was a simple radio communication away. Newman being fairly busy would be easy to get an actual to verify weather from the TAF and so on. I live and breath this stuff daily at work it's not hard to plan and divert if things go south, you just have to keep that path open and not get cornered.

43Inches , I know full well that a tower is not an alternate requirement. I have operated in WA for 30 years. The services available in most of WA are a joke. I remember the debacle years ago when brand new towers were built in Karratha and Port Hedland then promptly closed as a cost cutting measure and stood empty for years. I know its not a requirement nor is mandatory alternate for single runways. But it should be , like the rest of the world.
RPT operations in WA are Mickey Mouse pure and simple. I recall flying with an ex-Longhaul F/O into Solomon on a hot dusty day. He commented “F#### that was like landing on the Moon ! “ Top of descent into Heathrow you have half a dozen alternates with Cat 2/Cat 3. Easy.
Majors regard Perth as a Remote airport.

Remember the BA 747 years ago that ended up in Learmonth after unforecast fog in Perth?. Not much has changed.
Why you would want to defend the dismal standard of facilities in WA is a mystery.
Events like this will continue so long as RPT Jets operate high frequency operation into inadequate facilities. Simple.
Cat B TAF ? Put out by a bloke in Perth. Not worth a pinch of the preverbial.
VHF on the ground ? Wow , such sophistication.

We are not talking about a 747, its an F100. And what was said before is that conditions were CAVOK at numerous sites around Paraburdoo. So the options for diversion should have been high, facilities mean little in this regard. If it was the case of CAVOK at Newman for instance, why did they not divert there after one or two approaches, there was no mention of a fuel emergency being declared in the report, or any emergency being declared before descending below minima. I'm not debating they should have fumbled to another airport not knowing what the weather was. There's an AWIS at YPBO, they should have discussed options when they received the bad news on that before the first approach, they could have easily requested weather on an alternate at that point, maybe they did, we don't know yet.

The question is, why did the make 4 attempts and bust a minima?

Actually something has changed. As I understand it, that TAF isn’t put out by a bloke in Perth any more, nor is the one for Perth. All aviation forecasting is being centralised in Melbourne and Brisbane. “Best practice”, “Better, more streamlined service”, “Customer-focused”, all the usual crap you hear when someone’s trying to cut costs and get themselves a bonus.

That is because we pretend that they are Charter and not RPT.
fixedschedules and fixed destinations.
We don’t need no RFFS. Wait until one burns and see the surprise from government and the general public. One hundred passengers on a jet and no fire service available.
As I keep saying, we are a developing country but at least you can drink the water.

Can't do much about the weather, but at least Perth has a Cat 3B ILS nowadays. :ok:

Yup , big improvement. Still no parallel runway though. QF B787 ops out of Heathrow direct must be interesting when there is a requirement on Perth.

As a matter of interest is the F100 RNP capable ?

4 approaches is relatively rare, but I can pretty much guarantee once you decide to reduce the MDA, it means you ain’t got any more fuel to go anywhere else (unless possibly you had an uncontrollable fire onboard which wasn’t the case obviously) , the interesting thing will be how the crew got themselves into this situation, not the lowering of mda decision……I guess we will find out in 3 years once the ATSB have released the final 😂

Possibly the WX was above the requirement for an alternate when the planning was being done ? Lack of accurate info regarding deteriorating conditions so the crew don't have the facts to reassess the situation and go somewhere else instead before TOD. Arrive with the WX below minima and no other options.

Based on the weather reported in Avherald and the charts (easy to find on the internet) the weather looked ok for the initial approach. They obviously had at least enough fuel for an hour (presumably enough to divert to Newman or wherever) as that is the time between first missed approach and landing on the fourth attempt. The mistake seems to have been in committing to the destination airfield. After that it may have been the choice between arriving below final reserve at their diversion airfield and busting a fairly high mda where they were.

Fixation on landing at planned destination is a real problem
Diverting is not done lightly. At the mob I used to work for some ports were available but banned due the simple lack of stairs and somebody to operate them. Then there is flight plans , load sheets max landing weight , takeoff weight etc. etc. Weather isn’t the only issue. In an ideal world you would discuss all that at flight planning before you left Perth. On top of that is getting an aircraft out of position and miners on crew change out of position. Contracts can be lost if you do that too often. Shouldn’t be a consideration but it is. Glad I’m retired. WA can be a pain with a cyclone of the coast or an ex-cyclone becoming a tropical low drifting inland. Take my hat off to those fliying underequiped aircraft there on a daily basis.
I had a dual-GPS RNP capable B737-800 with a HUD an lots of range.
Krismiler , its not like lobbing into Singapore. Like I said before , the Wild _ West.

Probably irrelevant to this incident, but WA's aviation forecasting is now done via either Melbourne (Southern WA) & Brisbane (Northern WA - includes YPBO & YNWN). This was a cost cutting decision by BoM to reduce the number of forecasters in Perth.

Personally, I "feel" TAF accuracy around WA has suffered as a result of this move, with the loss of local knowledge the most likely cause...

Bluntly, lots of unemployed pilots = lots of pressure on employed pilots to perform to the company’s “satisfaction”.

This is the state of play across the world today.

Complete rubbish in Aus airlines. No one would blink an eye if this aircraft had diverted to Karratha or Newman after 2 approaches. It would have been refuelled and they would have tried again and if no luck gone back to Perth.

Pilots would not have even been questioned about it. The company would sort out the passengers on another flight later that day.

I'd have to agree with the above comment, it'd be unlikely that you'd even hear about it if you diverted. It is inconvenient but all of the companies involved understand wx is beyond anyone's control and that it goes with the territory of operating aircraft into these ports.

YPKA is great option - CTA and the weather is usually good, save for cyclone season on occasion. Stacks of runways in the Pilbara, most of them have refuelling facilities too. Getting a new loadsheet and flt plan are pretty simple as it's all electronic anyway. Not really a big deal (although maybe it was in years gone by)

From experience I think the biggest threat in this region is the large amount of traffic and the potential for separation breakdowns, not weather.

But four approaches is a lot. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.

Indeed.
"The only time you are carrying too much fuel, is when you're on fire"
it is not a crime to have an accident but it is a.crime to run out of fuel.

I agree about forecasting accuracy.
Seemed to go downhill starting about 18-24 months ago.
As recently as last week I did an approach to minimums on a nearly VFR forecast.
Yes, I know it happens but it is becoming more common.
Took them most of the day to amend it….

Better weather reporting and forecasting capability is obviously required. If the crew were aware that conditions were deteriorating and likely to remain that way for a prolonged period of time, they may have diverted after the first missed approach.

Aviation involves trade offs, in PNG the four main factors are:
1. Fuel
2. Weather
3. Airfields
4. Daylight
Any one of these could be reduced as long as the other three were in your favor. Lowering two of these was emergency only and beyond that you didn't go.

If the Met Office isn't up to scratch in the area then carry extra fuel. The carriage of excess is something that regularly comes up at fleet meetings and I wouldn't be surprised if pilots had been made aware of how much extra had been uplifted in the previous month, how little of it was used and how much it had cost.

Many years ago I got caught out by fog in Tullamarine, I left Bankstown with the latest TTF which had no requirements on it. Arrived to BKN at 200', not sure of the vis on landing but the tower asked if I had cleared the runway.