Rick
The said captain had just converted to the Q400, he could have 1,000 years experience, that’s irrelevant. The Dash 8 is certified for CAT II approaches, but the crew must be too, that includes the Captain and First Officer. When you complete the Type Rating you normally do the CAT II qualification, but doing it in the sim is not enough. Once you have done it in the sim you have to then complete a few approaches on the line to get signed off.
It is quite common for every airline to have a combination of aircraft/pilots who are not CAT II qualified.
Now when you do your planning before departure you can only go on what is presented to you at the time. So you check your destination weather and alternates. If the weather is in limits then fine, you go, so he went. Perfectly acceptable. On the way there the Pilot Not Flying would get the ATIS for Paris, Orly & maybe Lille, the weather in Paris had deteriorated to an extent that a CAT II approach was needed. Knowing they couldn’t do a CAT II they would have looked at Orly, Lille & Brussels, they would have realised that the weather was also out of limits here too. So sufficient fuel provided they decided to go back to Cardiff. Totally and utterly the correct decision.
Now on that particular evening, I was also operating to Paris from Exeter. Before we left the weather in Paris was CAT II, so we double checked we were both qualified and that the a/c was as well. Also if your destination is CAT II you need 2 alternates that are 1 stage of approach better than your destination, i.e CAT I, so we checked our alternates and we had 2 airfields that were. So we went.
What we did do in this instance was take enough fuel to round trip back to Exeter. The reason is that our alternates were close to CAT I limits, and with the small window of opportunity with a CATII approach we knew it could quite easily drop below CATII minima in Paris, this could happen at our alternates too. So rather than faff about in holding patterns, diverting to an airfield that you also won’t get in to it is better to just return to base. This was our plan should our alternates then drop out of limits.
Incidentally the Cardiff passengers were bussed to Exeter and we took them to Paris that evening. They were all superb and never gave the cabin crew grief. During our CATII approach we got the approach lights visual at 120ft agl, so this was right on the limits too.
but surly the operator should not run the risk or ensure their pilots are fully trained/qualified for any event / change in weather???
Ok then, we’re going back to Exeter, the weather goes down to CAT II minima, unfortunately there is no CAT II approach in Exeter. What then?
End of the day the weather can go out of limits anywhere at any time. It doesn’t matter what type of approach you are conducting, or whether the crew are CAT II, CAT III, it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately on this occasion the weather deteriorated sufficiently to stop the crew approaching, big deal, this happens all over the world. The crew did the right thing.
Dean
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