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"Less than Minimums"
Jan 21, 2008: Last month we got a few new pilots. Jason is one of them and he and I had an opportunity to fly a few times and had a hell of a flight down to crazy minimums a few weeks ago.
Our runway at Wiesbaden was closed for some minor repairs over the Martin Luther King Jr. 4-day weekend. Jason and I got tagged with the weekend duty - he just turned RL2 which meant that he was now ready to start mission training. The instructors were done flying with him and turned him over the the unit trainers (UT) - I am one of them.
On Saturday we flew the airplane to Ramstein and parked it for a few days. Our families drove down to pick us up so we could spend the next few days at home. On Monday morning we drove back to Ramstein to start our mission - we had an add on of passengers who all needed to go to Pristina. No problem. I glanced at the manifest and saw that we were flying a LTC, SGM, 1LT and GS12. I sent Jason in to brief the passengers and I moved the airplane to the red carpet - pickup area.
After I shut the airplane down, Jason came out and said - "Hey dude, we are flying a Lieutenant General (yes, a 3 star General) and not a Lieutenant Colonel like we thought. OOps! No problem - we treat everyone the same but it was a big shock. I looked at my mission book again I saw that it was truly a LTG - I just missed it because I had printed the sheet so small.
Of we go. I am flying first. Jason will fly back. The flight is great and has no issues. The wx for Pristina is forecasted to be 3000 overcast with 5000 meters of visibility due to haze. We arrive in the area and tune up the airfield weather information (ATIS) and hear that it is much, much worse than was predicted. The visibility is a mere 300 meters with heavy fog and there is no discernable ceiling. I chuckle while I listen and Jason looks at me like what the hell are you laughing about. He then hears the ATIS and understands. The thing is as we entered the valley, it was totally clear - could see grass and houses and such but as you looked south to LYPR, the smoke factory was lining up some heavy clouds at ground level.
We were the fifth airplane to enter the area. Three of them were in a holding pattern and one was on the approach. Approach control asked us to state our intentions - unlike other services or civilian pilots, in the Army, we are allowed to execute an approach regardless of whether or not we have the minimum weather for the approach - which, by the numbers presented, we did not have the minimums. We were going to try! I looked back at the LTG who was reading - "Hey sir, the weather is crap down there but we are going to try to get you in. If we don't make it we will head off to Split, Croatia." He didn't seem too bothered by my announcement and went back to reading his book. Jason and I set up for the pending ddifficulty...
We headed outbound on the procedure track and could see the ground with no obscurations at all. However, as we turned inbound on the ILS, the sun was bright and directly in our eyes. It reflected off the low clouds ahead at ground level. I put my sun glasses on, reviewed the approach again, talked about the missed approach again and one last time, reveiwed what we were going to do - Jason's #1 job was to be scouting outside looking for the runway. If he saw something, he were to call it out ASAP!
Jason asked if I was going to pass the controls to him if he had the runway in sight - I assured him that I would keep them. In the helicopter world, we are trained to pass the controls to the person identifying the runway. Although this may work in theory, in practice its not the greatest idea - at least not in an airplane. When flying down to minimums, by the time the runway is spotted it would be more dangerous to pass the controls on to the co-pilot to fly from the right seat in bad weather and only for the last few hundred feet of the approach. Instead, we keep the pilot flying on the controls throughout the approach and landing.
We continued the descent and got concerned as we entered the clouds - we were only 150' above the minimum altitude for the approach. I ripped my sun glasses off my head as we slowly lowered into the darkness of the thick grayish-white clouds. I didn't want anything to obscur my chances of seeing the runway if Jason were to call it out.
We couldn't see anything - just a white windscreen.
We had already determined that we would leave the flaps in the approach position and would just turn off the auto pilot when we were on the missed or when we had the runway in sight.
The computer sounded off with "Minimums..." and I looked at my altimeter to see if we were truly there or if we still had a few feet to continue down. We had 25 more feet to go. Still nothing visibile outside.
"Jason - you see anything." I said.
"Nope." He quickly responded.
As with most stories that take you down to minimums, I was just about to push the power up for the missed approach when he said - "I see a light."
I looked out, confirmed that I saw a few of the approach lights as well and turned off the auto pilot. I simulatneously called for the landing check and struggled to follow the lights to the ground. The fog/clouds were thick - really thick!
We slowly continued down on the approach and I could see the lights that were perpendicular to the flight path but still no runway. We were getting lower and lower and I could see the rising runway on the display slowly coming up to meet us. We were dead on couse; on the glide path and in a very slight bank which was easy to correct once I had a better visual reference (the perpendicular lights).
Still descending and closer to the ground, we knew that the lights would lead us to the runway. We continued. Time seemed to stand still and it seems that we were inching down towards the runway...every so slowly.
Finally I saw the approach end markings that announced the runway and began to easy back on the controls to round out. As I did, the visibility increased ever so slightly - I could now see 300 meters or so. Just as I was about to touch down, we flew right back into the decreased visibility we had just come out of (how much more decreased can it be if we are already down to 300 m visibility right)? I leveled the airplane, watched the ground come up to meet us as we touched down every so softly. I applied the brakes. Came to a full stop and taxied back to the apron.
After we confirmed that we had landed, the tower wanted to know our conditions on final - Wntered the clouds at 350' above the ground and visibility was 300m or less.
We shutdown the aircraft, unloaded the passengers and received a coin from the LTG - he is the Army IG by the way.
We got out of the aircraft and shook out the adrenaline that was pumping. That was an amazing approach. We talked about our approach and wondered what the acft behind us were going to do now that an ARMY C12 had just made it in.
In the background we heard the jet engines of a commercial airliner as it made its approach. We couldn't see it but we could hear it. It got closer and closer and eventually the engines wound back up to a high picth as they executed teh missed approach. After a few seconds we saw it above as it popped out on the missed approach and climbed back into holding - that added a little pride to our walk for the next few hours.
As it turned out, within 30 minutes of our landing, the conditions had improved dramatically and the field cleared off and the rest of the holding acft made it in. But it sure made us feel good to make it in under such crap conditions - despite having a relatively new fixed wing aviator in teh other seat to help out.
Although he was a brand new guy, he sure did great - without his being able to spot the lights we would have climbed back up and joined everyone else.