All Weather Operations — Page 56, Lesson 87

I want to walk you through the start of the All Weather Operations chapter. This is a major topic because, as the introduction explains, modern commercial aeroplanes need to operate in weather conditions that, twenty-five years ago, simply would not have been possible. The driving forces are the demands of the travelling public and freight operations. The reason we can do this comes down to two things: first, the ability to accurately assess and forecast the weather at the aerodromes we plan to use, and second, the availability of high-precision electronic systems. Those systems provide extremely accurate guidance in both azimuth — that's the horizontal direction — and elevation, which is the vertical angle. Together, they make present-day commercial aviation virtually oblivious to the weather. Now, you might think that means we could carry out a completely blind take-off and landing. Technically, it might be possible, but the book points out that other considerations need to be taken into account. For example, it is no good being able to land an aeroplane with zero visibility if the pilot then cannot safely manoeuvre the aeroplane off the runway to the parking stand. Also, not all aerodromes have the same high degree of sophistication with respect to facilities as, say, London Heathrow. So, to create a framework within which operations specifically in poor visibility can be conducted safely, the regulation EU-OPS 1 specifies criteria for what are called Low Visibility Operations. That covers both take-off and landing. The criteria are explained and detailed in this chapter, and we will work through them. The next section introduces a key concept: Aerodrome Operating Minima, and it tells us this is the operator's responsibility. An operator — that is, the airline or company — shall establish, for each aerodrome planned to be used, aerodrome operating minima. Those minima must not be lower than the values given in EU-OPS 1. The book says those values are reproduced in this chapter and are required learning for you. The method of determination of the minima must be acceptable to the Authority — that's the national aviation authority. And importantly, the minima shall not be lower than any that may be established for the aerodrome by the State in which the aerodrome is located. So the operator's minima can be higher than the State's, but never lower. That figure on page 60 will help visualise some of these concepts as we go deeper. For now, the core takeaway is that we have a regulatory framework — EU-OPS 1 — that sets the floor for how low we can go in poor visibility, and the operator must set their own minima at or above that floor, with the Authority's approval.