CAT 3 Airports…

Great picture Moondance!
You can easily see the spot I go to at LBA (The best I think), where the silver car is in the front of the wall. Not the one in the graveyard!

As Moondance says LBA does have full CAT III capabilities. An ATC once explained the situation at LBA as regards diversions due to fog. Individual operators can decide whether to land in foggy conditions. A number of the operators at LBA will not use the CAT III runway if there is any element of tail wind and in addition pilots have to be trained in CAT III operations. More diversions at LBA are due to operator policy and untrained pilots rather than the fact that it is actually foggy.

Thanks for that reply Moondance, you can see the hump in the middle of the runway at LBA from where I spot, BHX is even worse isn’t it?

Any chance of them installing Cat3 on 14 anytime? Much prefer the a/c on 14!

Is that UPS 767 a regular? I saw one when I was there back in Feb in the new colours. Is the Channex 737 for the EDI mail run? I think it could be.
When I did my work experience I wasn’t even going to be allowed to work in the terminla, nevermind the tower! 🙂

[QUOTE=LBARULES]You lucky thing Dan! When I tried to get work experience anywhere at the airport, they said I couldn’t due to security and not been 18. Did it help with your dad working at the airport?
QUOTE]

Nope my dad working at the airport didn’t help at all. He works in FLS and so didn’t have anything to do with NATS, and infact FLS turned me away for security reasons. I went for an interview at NATS, and got accepted for work experience out of 5 other people on that day, so I was pretty chuffed to say the least! Also got to spend the rest of the day up the tower out of school, and only went home when the weather got so bad the tower was in the clouds.

I guess I should have stated that my numbers were for US operations. 🙂

UK minima are quoted in feet for Decision Height, and metres for Runway Visual Range (RVR), so in the UK absolute minina are :

Cat 1 – 200ft DH, 550m RVR
Cat 2 – 100ft DH, 300m RVR
Cat 3a – 50ft DH, 200m RVR
Cat 3b – 0ft DH, 75m RVR

Different companies may have different procedures, but for us, anything less than Cat 1 is a mandatory autoland (and Cat 2 & 3 use Radio Altitude for minima).
Leeds IS Cat 3b on 32, but only Cat 1 on 14 – never done it for real, but apparently an autoland on 32 is entertaining, as the runway is sloping away from underneath the aircraft as it (automatically) attempts to find the ground!!
Low Vis Procedures (LVP) must be in force for Low Vis Operations (LVO ie autoland) and as Wannabe says, this involves aircraft holding at holding points further from the runway, to minimise any possible disturbance to the ILS signal.

You lucky thing Dan! When I tried to get work experience anywhere at the airport, they said I couldn’t due to security and not been 18. Did it help with your dad working at the airport?

Thanks for the reply Whiskey Delta!

Doesn’t the CAT rating also affect the distance of the holding point from the runway? I think the standard holding point distance is 70m, but when it goes down to CAT II or more than the aircraft have to hold further away? Something like that…..I get to do my work experience in Air Traffic Control next month! 😀

CAT or category deals with a type of instrument approach. The standard approach is a CAT I. CAT II and CAT III have lower minimums that allow for landings in worse weather. Each have specific aircraft equipment requirements and crew training requirements associated with each type.

CAT I: 200′ DH (decision height) 2400′ RVR (runway visual range) 1800′ RVR with appropriate lighting

CAT II: 100′ DH 1200′ RVR

CAT IIIa: 0 <100′ DH 700-1200 RVR
CAT IIIb: 0 <50′ DH 150-700 RVR
CAT IIIc: 0 DH 0 RVR

I too don’t know the difference, apart from it having something to do with visibility(?). I think CAT3 means that you can approach depsite not been able to see very far at all. That has always been a problem at LBA, with the problems we have with fog.