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This is the story of air canada flight 624, it's been awhile since I’ve done a video on Air canada, the last one being Air canada flight 143 or the gimli glider. But today’s incident is far less known and I thought it would be nice to shed some light on the story behind flight 624. On the 29th of march 2015 an Airbus A320 was to fly from toronto to halifax with 133 passengers onboard and 5 crew members. Before the flight even took off, dispatch was busy disseminating weatherdata to the crew, the weather at halifax was not that good. Winds were at 15 knots and gusting to 21 knots and visibility was at 2600 feet.
At 10:05 pm on the 28th of march 2015 the plane took off. On route the pilots talked about alternate airports just incase the weather at Halifax did not allow them to land. Their planned alternate at this time was Greater Moncton international airport. While in cruise the pilots calculated the important mentrics for their landing at halifax. They determined that their final approach fix was to be 2200 feet above sea level. The final approach fix is a point in 3D space. To make a safe landing the plane must be at a particular speed and a particular altitude at the FAF. Their minimum descent altitude was at 813 feet above sea level. They also had to approach the runway at an angle of 3.5 degrees, a bit steeper than usual but nothing the A320 wasnt designed for.
At 10:56 pm the information from dispatch wasnt encouraging, an air canada plane had just landed on runway 05 and they had to do a missed approach, if the weather got any worse theyd have to divert. The pilots went over the go around procedures and They also looked at the winds and the runway conditions. They made sure that it was safe to land the plane.
At 11:11 pm the weather was not cooperating, visibility had dropped to 1320 feet and heavy snow. According to rules they could not proceed past the final approach point if the visibility was lower than 2600 feet. The crew decided that if the weather were to be too bad when they reached halifax theyd hold until they hit the minimum fuel needed to divert.
As the plane descended down to 29,000 feet the pilots talked about the non precision approach onto runway 05. As they flew towards Halifax they asked the terminal controller for permission to hold at CETTY. Cetty was a point on the fundy eight standard terminal arrival route, the crew could hold till 1 am at cetty with the fuel that they had. At 11:34 pm as the plane entered a hold at cetty the weather was not improving, as snow ploughs removed copious amounts of snow from the runway the visibility was still at 1300 feet, too low for a landing. At 12:07 am flight 624 was till in the hold and the captain said that if the weather did not improve in the next 20 minutes they’d divert to moncton international airport. At 12:09 Pm the controller comes on and lets the crew know that the visibility had dropped to 650 feet, not what the crew wanted to hear. But 4 minutes later the controller lets the crew know that the controller had made a mistake. The visibility was at 1300 feet and improving. Soon it was at 2600 feet and the vertical visibility was at 300 feet. With the weather now at the required minimum the crew started to prepare for the approach.
At 12:16 am the controller cleared the flight to ODKAS the intermediate fix and was allowed to descend to 4000 feet. From ODKAS they could make a straight in approach to runway 05.At
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