Foggy weather
 

Hi, I flew into East Midlands this morning just before 9.00am, to me it seemed quite foggy with virtually no visibility.

I kept thinking we would break through the clouds at least a couple of minutes before touch-down but we didn't. We touched down then started to see a little bit around us but not much.

I have to take my hat off to the crew, despite all the training and instruments and computer back up etc., etc., it still must take nerves of steel to land in this type of weather. Thank you so much for getting me back safely.

My question, in aviation terms is, how bad was the fog this morning, did it just appear worse to us as SLF than it really was.

Many thanks for your replies.

Foggy weather
 

Cat 3 ILS conditions, autoland. First time you do it, it's interesting, but autoland first came in with the Trident decades ago. To be honest it is a non-event because you train to it on a regular basis and if there's any doubt in the equipment, you go somewhere with better visibility.

This is just having crossed the threshold of 27 at EMA a few years ago.
I had driven past on the A423 about 30 minutes before this was taken it was dire
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps50825faf.jpg

100ft call
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...psf27f68d7.jpg

This may be of interest:

Great movie visuals :ok:

It's fun to visualize the lights coming at you as windows on buildings as you pass between them :bored:

A good demo for the question asking SLF, but oh Lord, why the bloody music?

:) Yep agree, but the option to turn it off is there too ;)

Wot? You mean there isn't orchestral backing on the flight deck for Cat 3 Autoland...!?

Thank you for your replies, the more I see the more in awe I am. I am just glad I didn't know beforehand it was going to be so foggy.:*

LookingForAJob: If that is the name of the piece, it is indeed an inspired choice...

Maddie.... It's not rocket science. As a pilot once explained to a nervous old lady who asked how he found his way around... there's a red light on the left wing and a green light on the right. I just fly between them.....

As others have said it is a non-event - the only thing different is that the plane has two extra passengers on such a landing!

For real nerves of steel watch landings at places like Funchal and Leeds in gusting crosswinds!

We went into low visibility procedures at about 8.30 Sunday morning, by 9.00 met visibility was 400M, and the visibility along the runway between 400/600M - arrivals all shooting CAT3 approaches - guess you were one of the Ryanairs?

Yep, I came in from Dublin, we landed at 8.58 I think, 10 or 15 minutes early.

The crazy thing was that the cruise was really good - blue skies, isolated white clouds then we started to descend into the cloud and it went on and on.

I have been flying at least twice a week, most weeks, for many years now, but this was my first really foggy landing ever. My definition of 'really foggy' being you know you have touched down by sound not by sight.

As SLF with heightened awareness due to fear, I have to say, perversely, this experience has actually helped me.

I remember once coming into Brussels not knowing it was foggy. It was a foreign carrier and the FD had remained silent throughout the flight. I was therefore somewhat surprised when seconds after entering what I thought was the top of a stratus layer (at what I expected to be at about 2000-3000 feet or so) we touched down! It was shallow but dense.

I remember once being fascinated when sitting up on the jumpiest for landing. We overflow STN and looking vertically down. the area was foggy/misty but lights could be seen clearly. The same lights were invisible under thick fog on the approach. Looking vertically down was no problem - looking at the same thing on the glideslope was (of course) quite different!

An autoland, in limiting conditions, is, in some respects more difficult than a hand flown landing.
"How so?" you may ask.
Well, a lot of kit and computers must, demonstrably, be functioning before and during the approach; most importantly that the aircraft is accurately tracking the approach path in the vertical and horizontal planes - Glidepath (although we aren't gliding) and Localiser - and that it intends to flare at 20ft to 30ft above the runway.

When I flew my first automatic civil jet, the instructors' task was, amongst others, to ensure that we could fly the aircraft through the auto systems when our natural inclination was to disconnect and hand fly. Building confidence in the ability of the automatics takes training time - "What's it doing now?" being a common comment.

For a manual ILS (Instrument Landing System) approach the Decision Height is usually 200ft above touchdown. As systems, both ground and air, improved, the automatic landing DH went from 100ft to 50ft to 20ft to zero.

Using a Cat2 DH, of, say 100ft we'd call "50 above" at 150ft and "Decide!" at 100ft. If the aircraft could not be seen to be tracking correctly the next call would be "Go around." and, if tracking correctly, "Land."

Last time I flew with a Cat3C 0ft DH, we had a 75m visibility limit which was to permit us to taxi and the "Land." call was made at 1000ft above touchdown - but fear not - we still monitored the systems as before, ready to downgrade, increase the DH, land manually (vis permitting) or go around.

So you can see that there is a LOT more decision making in a very short time when monitoring an autoland in min vis conditions than hand flying to, say, 200ft.

Going on a bit, aren't I but, finally, when I began flying the RAF Argosy in 1968, we had a little leader cable aerial fitted on the nose which was to be used for automatic taxiing in zero vis. The ground cables have yet to be installed.

Dumb question from SLF: does GPS play any part in auto-land nowadays?

I know being "first" can have many interpretations, but commonly accepted that Sud Caravelles operated by Air Inter in France, who were plagued by fog conditions at multiple points on their network, more so than in Britain, were the pioneers. First auto landing in development by a Caravelle was 29 September 1962, first commercial Cat 2 was 25 September 1964, first commercial Cat 3 was 2 March 1967, first commercial landing in real Cat 3 visibility 9 January 1969. All by Caravelles on the Paris-Lyon route, their number one domestic trunk at the time (business later mostly lost to the TGV train). All before the Trident I understand.