Tuesday, January 04, 2011



This video was posted on Liveleak, the date is December 11th, 2010. This is a cockpit view from an ILS approach to runway 06 in La Havana, Mexico. It's a scheduled airline flight, the airline in question is Click Mexicana. I *think* the airplane is a Fokker 100. I *know* they landed in a thunderstorm and I also *know* there's no way in hell I would have continued the approach, not with the thunder and the lightning and the strong possibility of low-level windshear and whatnot. Maybe I'm getting cowardly in my old age - I'm totally cool with that.

7 comments:

Tim said...

Yes, it is a Fk100. And the approach is to Havana, Cuba. I wouldn't have done an approach in those conditions, either.

Paul Tomblin said...

Being "cowardly in your old age" seems like a good way of making sure you *have* an old age.

Capt. Schmoe said...

They are lucky that we are not reading about this on PPRUNE or Aviation Herald.

Wasn't it Yeager who said "sometimes it's better to be lucky than good?" Did he factor in unwise?

Thanks for the post.

rw2 said...

thank heavens they had time to take video. ;-)

Anonymous said...

From what you see visually, it doesn't look *too* bad, but the radar is holy crap! With no windshear in conditions like that, you just get soaked, like they did. No guarantee there won't be windshear though, even if it's not reported. I'd be looking to hold, but I won't pass judgement on the captain because I wasn't there and don't know all the factors involved.

Magnus said...

not much room for a go-around either... :-S

Ryan O'Harren said...

Yes, it doesn't look that bad until about 1:40 into the video. The big question is... What was going to be the missed approach procedure? Straight ahead? He left himself a bad way out in my opinion.

Ryan