Finkface

Anyone know what happened to WS1862 today? I have friends who were supposed to be coming down for a visit but it looks like it did an out-and-back to YVR. It seems the return WS1863 HNL-YVR has been cancelled too as there is no aircraft here in HNL.

YVR72

Westjet 737 aborted landing at SXM extremely close to ocean surface.

james dean

yikes, they probably should have executed a go-around a bit sooner, that's very close!!

tracon

CADORS

james dean

Primary flight instrument failure, nothing you can do about that. No options except return or continue, whichever airport is the closest..

CZAMFlyer

Yikes indeed. I wonder how the approach managed to go so wrong?

james dean

several factors IMO, appears to be quite windy on approach, perhaps windshear with a downdraft short final and or just improperly positioned to do a visual approach, second approach looks to be proper height for distance from the runway.

tracon

http://globalnews.ca/news/3311396/wa...lose-to-water/

“Occasionally a landing will be aborted and a missed approach initiated if the pilots determine it’s the best option. In this case, our crew experienced rapidly changing weather conditions and as a result descended below the normal glide path on the approach to the landing.”

“The crew recognized the situation, and the regularly trained and desired outcome was obtained — a safe missed approach to a safe landing,” WestJet stated.

aerobod

Here is the official statement on the WestJet blog: https://blog.westjet.com/westjet-sta...en-on-march-7/

Symmetre

A couple of years ago I had an opposite issue flying into ICN on KE. The descent was perfectly normal, but as the plane cleared the piano keys at the end of the runway it didn't come down and land, it just continued floating along a short distance off the ground. After a second or two of this the pilots evidently decided we had overshot too much runway, hit the gas and went around for another go. On the PA announcement they said an unexpected gust of wind put their touch-down point beyond where they wanted it.

I wonder if the pilots in SXM hit a downdraft at some point in their approach? Weather in the video is clearly lousy.

In any case, they obviously made the right call to go around and wait a few minutes for conditions to settle. Good job.

tracon

From my sources.......
A/C was flying a coupled RNAV approach in misty conditions.
VNAV disconnected.
Pilots lost visual reference and did a missed approach.

james dean

Pretty decent report on this incident...http://www.jacdec.de/2017/03/12/2017...-sint-maarten/

J. Leslie

Is that the same plane that had a couple of smoke in the cockpit incidents ex YYC a few weeks back?

sofasurfer

Loving the candour here (copy-pasted verbatim):

Is that how they detect air rage?

james dean

too funny, good on you....