The weather has been making the flying even more interesting lately! I’ve had plenty of chance to practice cross-wind landings. There are a few techniques in the FCTM (flight crew training manual), but we use two techniques, which are deemed to be the safest. One technique involves flying the approach with a crab into wind and landing with a crab, then straightening out onto the runway. I use this for light crosswinds, since there’s not much of a crab to correct. For stronger crosswinds, I use the other technique, which is to de-crab during the flare. I find that landings are much easier once the muscle memory is set in and chair flying or even practicing the movements in flight sim helps a lot, otherwise when you’re capacity is reduced, it’s easy to forget items which would otherwise be automatic or done without concious thought.
So far I’ve experienced two occasions where we nearly had to go-around (i.e. abort a landing) due to the weather. The first time was when we were flying to Cork and the wind and visibility/cloud ceiling was out of limits. As we were approaching Cork, we got the weather and then made a decision to hold to wait for the weather to improve since we had plenty of fuel on board to do so. Unfortunately the winds were too strong, and so we were out of CAT IIIA autoland limits. In order to use the autoland system, the winds must not be over 20kts headwind, 15kts crosswind and 10kts tailwind. The problem on the day was the headwind! We couldn’t attempt a manual landing either due to the low cloud and visibility. Fortunately, after about 30 minutes of holding, the weather had improved enough for us to attempt an approach. We flew a monitored approach – this is when the First Officer (myself) flies the approach and the Captain lands the aircraft. As I was flying the approach, I ran through the go-around procedure a couple of times in case we did need to do so. It was really windy, and gusting and the rain was slapping across the aircraft windows, reducing the visibility further. However, before we got to minimums, the runway lighting system was in clear view and the Captain took over and continued the approach to landing. I was quite relieved that we didn’t have to execute a go-around, though by the time we saw the runway lights it was quite clear to me we were going to make it in fine.
The other time was – and this was really close – was when we were flying to Kaunas, Lithuania. The forecast had told us that there was possibility of fog/mist and low visibility, so I was expecting another monitored approach. I was actually hoping the weather would improve so that I could have the landing, but the weather of course has a mind of its own! This time the winds were fine, but there were no CAT IIIA facilities, so we decided to go with a monitored ILS and go around if we were not visual by our approach minima. The weather reported the visibility and RVR to be above our minima, so we began our approach, however during the approach the visibility began to decay and so the chance of a go-around increased. It was only just at minimums did the Captain see the runway lights! I was flying the approach on instruments, so I didn’t immediately see anything, and as I was transitioning to looking outside, it took me a few more seconds to notice the approach lights. This highlighted the merits of the monitored approach. When flying the approach, there’s a transition between looking inside, flying on instruments and looking outside and flying visually, and there’s almost a certain lag in it. So since the Captain is looking outside already to capture any visual cues, there is no transition, and so there is no delay. Once he sees the runway or approach lights, he can just take control and fly the aircraft down to landing.
I’m glad I’ve been exposed to this kind of weather, now in my training, so it won’t be much of a shock if I do experience it again once I’m line checked! There are still a few more months of Winter to get through, so I’m sure there’ll be some interesting adventures yet ahead!