Which video are you looking at? The video from the beach and the photo match up nicely while the one from the airport shows rain and wind. Conclusion? There was a squall over the airport that shows in the webcam video but the approach itself was clear.

I've got to assume you've never operated in the tropics.

A single tropical Cu - (not Cb, Cu; your basic 5000 x 5000-ft puffball) - can drop a dense rain shaft that is less than a mile thick, yet totally impenetrable to vision. And with 20-kt constant trade winds, can move on 5 miles in 15 minutes.

Living and working in San Juan, just over yonder from TNCM, it was almost a daily afternoon event to go from severe clear and sunny, to the middle of a downpour that cut viz to tens of meters, and back to bright and sunny again, in a period of 10 minutes, as one single cloud decided to cut loose. With rain so heavy that within 15 seconds you might just as well have jumped in the sea - soaked to the nether regions of the underwear. And flooded gutters and streets - localized to a 4-block area.

Not that you can't get longer or wider-spread storms as well. But in the tropics, there is nothing at all abnormal about the visual difference between those two approaches - not only on the same day, or 45 minutes apart, but even just 15 minutes apart.

During my one-and-only flight to St. Martin, we experienced exactly the circumstances described by pattern_is_full. A 30 minute hold waiting for a rain shower to move away from the approach, followed by straight forward approach and landing in VMC and a disembarkation onto a hot and steamy apron.

_._._._, "non event", certainly not.
All events are important; their significance depends on what individuals are willing to learn.

The first approach could have been an unusual deviation within normal operations, towards the accepted boundary of procedural approach systems and/or human performance.
We should remind ourselves that NPAs still involve significant risk which although often masked by precision-like systems, still depend on human monitoring and recovery. Thus a GA is 'normal', an approved response to a deviation. Celebrate, and learn from the success of human intervention.

Alternatively there was an unexpected or undetected external disturbance, where crews are again expected to compensate for deviation or error; the crew did, well done.
What we must learn is how the crew performed to achieve this success, or at least how they managed to do their best in the perceived situation.

We could understand how the situation developed, hopefully to identify similar occasions and avoid the circumstances. Of greater importance, we need to understand how the crew recovered the situation, because this behaviour could help in similar misjudged situations and a range of other 'normal' situations which require detection and recovery from operational variability.

Flying is not a narrow band, straight line operation. It is necessary for operational / human deviations in order to achieve objectives, - safety and economics. The skill in flying involves how we manage those deviations, our awareness, adaptability, and knowledge of safe boundaries; what we should learn from this event could help improve these aspects.
If the industry can achieve more successes ( recovery / adaptation ) in normal variable operation, then there should be fewer occasions where the outcome is less than we expect.

May I ask why so many "experts" are spending their energy to "prove" (or not) they were below MDA when it's very clear the aircraft pictured is in visual flight? Hint: it is normal and necessary to descend below MDA in 100% of landings!

No! No and More NO!!!
 

No! WestJet did NOT "Almost put one in the Water." The 'event' was a very ordinary Go Around, photographed from an unusual angle. No more and No Less. Please do not believe everything that some fools post on the internet. The more dramatic the story, the less likely it is to be true. Think first and perhaps believe later. We, of all populations, are expected to know better. (Hey... At least this one hit the wire. have lost two others today, including one cited in a PM that will now make no sense, even of it did before. Cannot recover, so there is nothing to edit. Not my day and perhaps I should go back to my book.) Thanks for your note, PJ2.
and... As others have noted as well, that is already a long and very low approach. If you've ever seen a few from ground level, they really do look horrible, especially as flown by VLA (Very Large Aircraft.) While possible, I'm not aware of any modern jet having taken a swim while on approach there, they just LOOK bad at times. Further, our colleague, Jet Jockey A4, can be a bit dramatic at times. It happens. NFZ

Yes it is, but not that far out from the threshold.

The airplane was low - below a 3deg descent path, period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN3Fd0x0FoQ

Why it was low will be determined by the airline's and the local regulator's investigations.

Yes, I certainly concur with that part of your post and have taken the advice.

I suspect that may not read the way you intended it to.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yNhAYK...ature=youtu.be

The B737 is clearly at threshold height when no threshold is even thinking of possibly considering entering the picture. To suggest that this was somehow "normal" is just ridiculous.

Only if you get it wrong, as the instrument approach gradient is 3degs as is the PAPI from the charts I’ve seen.
I have to agree. Also, we only see the 737 after it has started a GA and is on an upward path... :eek:

What a load of :mad: have been written on this thread, mostly authored by those who have little or no tropical flying experience, or by those who received a" PFO "letter from West Jet. The crew did it right, get a life!

Please explain how.

clunckdriver;

Some thoughts on reading thread contributions.

It is long past time to take this profession back from "internet experts".

Regarding what is written on these threads, there remain a few professional pilots here who haven't given up on discussions and who can separate some of the nonsense written by those who don't do the work from those who know their stuff.

Unless a newbie shows authentic curiosity and genuine interest, the rest just gets ignored, and, where particularly painfully-wrong, the poster ends up in the "ignore" bin. There is too little time to correct disingenuous queries.

The remaining dialogue is still very good for two reasons:

1) It is good for those who are starting out and who need to read and hear from those who have done it for a while, and,

2) It is good for those who have done it for years to disagree on all aspects of the profession and industry, and to support such disagreements with facts and references from professional sources, partly so that those just starting out don't get the idea that they know it all off the bat, especially when they see those who have done it for decades disagreeing both courteously and professionally. The strongest ego is quiet and sure of itself while being mindful of its weaknesses; the loudest ones are incertain.

The sign of someone who knows aviation and is a professional airman (man or woman), is being up-to-date with a thorough knowledge of their SOPs and as much as they can get about their airplane from the FCOM. The other sign is someone who reads the accident reports and reads some of the flight safety conference proceedings, just like other professions do.

How to disagree is as important as asking the right questions.

+1

PJ2, my respects good man. That is the basis and objective of this forum.

Clunckdriver, certainly there was something abnormal about that event, and I'd surely like to know what happened so I can be on the look out. You cannot learn all the lessons by yourself, goes the saying.

If anyone says 30 minutes is not enough to go from apocalyptic downpour to sunny skies, certainly they don't have experience flying in the Caribbean and should take a second or two before posting, so they don't look rubbish to those who do have such experience.

Now, where were we?

One would assume ATC would have been looking out of the window, perhaps with binoculars; they could have some input, but perhaps Prune is not on their radar. What is certain is that some guys in Westjet know about this. One would hope a safety report was filed and thus the safety foundation, one of which is based in Canada, will be able to publish a meaningful & educational report for the rest of us to learn from.

Visual flight or not, the aircraft should not be flown below the PAPI though should it? Sure, we've all done it. Legally speaking though, it makes an interesting case. If only lawyers could see colours other than black and white... Obviously, there are some airports where the 'till a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing' applies more than others, following the glide/PAPI's at these airports in certain types can lead to an underwear change at the other end, but the book says they are legal.

Just last week I was in TNCM, following an RNAV arrival. ATC were certainly calling us at every waypoint confirming altitudes then fully established - I wonder if this were the case prior to this incident. The controller certainly had her work cut out, she was pretty busy with both ends of the runway in use.

Passenger view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN3Fd0x0FoQ

A possible/likely scenario?
 

At first sight this resembles many other events, a lot of which have been catastrophic.

In that case, likely contributory factors could include

* The crew did not expect and prepare for a “minimums” approach, because the weather was reported basically “good” prior to top of descent. The weather is reported at ToD is 05018KT 9999 FEW014 BKN035 24/21 Q1018 A3008 NOSIG - that it doesn't sound like a very demanding approach if you're coming from winter in Canada to a Caribbean holiday resort, does it?

* Then, though there are now obviously some big showers around, a lot of the approach might be only marginally IMC anyway. Approaching MDA which is 2.5 miles out from the runway, the sea surface may well have been easily seen, so the pilots assume the runway would soon also become visible.

* With less favourable conditions now becoming very evident, there may also be a strong desire to get on the ground, rather than wait and possible divert with all the attendant disruption.

* So maybe both pilots just stayed head up looking for the runway. They're over an almost featureless water surface that's is merging into cloud and rain with no clear horizon.

* With the autopilot disconnected, that precipitation close to the runway decreases visibility, and maybe leads to an illusion of pitching up. In any case the descent rate increases without the pilots realising it, as both are focused on trying to see the runway and neither is concentrating on the instruments.

*Then something - radio altimeter callouts? peripheral vision? triggers the realisation that the surface is actually very much closer than it should be

* triggering low altitude go-around.

Optimistic/inadequate planning + deteriorating weather + minimal visual cues + plan continuation bias + absence of uninterrupted instrument monitoring to touchdown = a predictable nasty fright, but luckily, this time it's not as bad as LionAir in Bali or many others.

I think Slast has hit the nail on the head. The wobbly FlightRadar record of the first approach supports that. The second approach was much more polished.

Finally a CADORS for this incident was entered on March 27th (yesterday).

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...psxmzvqhgb.jpg