Ops Differences between Airlines as regards weather minima
 

I was at LOWI last week and surprised to see how, over a timespan of about 2 hours with weather conditions hardly changing (about BKN005, OVC012, RVR about 3 miles), some airlines diverted to EDDM, while others neatly came down and departed again.

Easyjet - EDDM
Air Berlin - EDDM
BA - EDDM

whereas

Transavia - all fine
Austrian - all fine

Two questions spring to mind:

1) Are ops procedures for airlines that different ? I know that LOWI has a weird approach and you need Austrocontrol authorization to have your minima lowered, but I would imagine that every major airline that regularly flies into LOWI would do the effort to obtain this...

2) Would it make sense for airlines that operate on lower minima to advertise their "skill" so that passengers are aware they have a lower chance of having their flight cancelled or having to sit on a 3 hour busride ?

Any thoughts are welcome.

A quick troll through the net seems to imply special minima for authorised crews, companies and aircraft, as for Salzburg and Chambery.

I've only done Salzburg and to use the lower minima you had to be sim checked.
With training costs and sim time now being at a premium, large companies would find it prohibitive to keep all their crews current. Smaller or more local operators would probably find it much more cost effective to keep a cadre of crews fully checked.

Hello Proudprivate!

The answer for your question - there are different minimas. You can apply for a lower minimum on the standart LDE approach 26 giving your exact aircraft performence data (climbe rate in the mapp single engine, etc.). The data is used by austro control to calculate your flight profile in case of mapp and as a result you are getting autorisation for a lower minimum. Additionally you have to do sim-trg to get this autorisation.
It is also nearly the same for the rnp rnav approach 26 which has presently the lowest possible mnm as the mapp is not turning back to the east but going straight over the rwy along waypoints to the west. To get approval by austrocontrol for this your aircraft must be rnp 0.3 approved. If you are interested just check aip austria ad lowi 2-18 and 2-22

best rgds
charly-viktor