I’d like to discuss this more and hear more comments. Not defensive at all.

If there was an accident, where would the report fault the crew?

At what point would others have bailed out and why?

Must assume two experienced pilots operating as crew in the scenario.

Nope,

I could not see the runway in the video, nor were the landing lights light up like a Christmas tree to indicate/visualize where the runway was............

from the video it looks like a white out.............that's a divert and grab a coffee and wait, especially in mountain regions.

This is KSAW so I don't know weather patterns. Even your camera picture shows very poor runway lighting.

I'm a pansy, I would not go in there in those conditions with Bob Hoover in the right or left seat.....

As you demonstrated, if the aircraft is properly controlled there is no accident. If there was an accident the cause would likely be improper control of the aircraft by the pilots.

The aircraft can handle the conditions. Can the pilots?

Yup. I've watched this several times and it is way cool. You guys are pros...

Nope,

I could not see the runway in the video, nor were the landing lights light up like a Christmas tree to indicate/visualize where the runway was............

from the video it looks like a white out.............that's a divert and grab a coffee and wait, especially in mountain regions.

This is KSAW so I don't know weather patterns. Even your camera picture shows very poor runway lighting.

I'm a pansy, I would not go in there in those conditions with Bob Hoover in the right or left seat.....

As soon as I realized the mains touching down were going to “surprise” me.

The Pueblo CO, fatal was most probably an anomaly but shows that mistakes do happen, especially in poor/icing weather.



You had decent vis and then flew into basically a white out......I would have bailed and taking my weenie tail back to the decent vis, landed and assessed what to do next...



I would assume that you both would have gone elsewhere.

Stages of the flight:

While In VMC at IAF, weather reported 600iirc and 7NM. Tower reported a jet landed earlier with moderate to good braking. 1/8” dry over 1/8” hardpack snow reported. Tower said a squall was moving in but would likely be gone by the time we arrived.

Tower later reported he couldn’t see the runway. “Advise on rollout”

Proceeded with approach

Contacted the Rabbit near minimums, continued

Contacted the runway lights, continued

Maintained descent to landing with runway lights in sight

We had and maintained the required visual cues at all times following the procedure. If the argument is based on personal minima, I get that. Otherwise, I’m wondering at what stage specifically you would have broken off and why?

Anytime you land in fresh snow (no tracks) with 12,000’, you’ll be using that style touchdown (maintain deck angle and shallow descent rate).

Mark got an alternate missed approved which was climb straight ahead to 3,600’. At any time we could have pitched, powered, and cleaned up straight ahead. There was never a reason to in my mind, although I was ready. We checked every box all the way down. An unnecessary missed approach below minimums is not without its own set of risks.

Yeah we know that

What about Mike C?

In all seriousness it’s good to have defined limits. In aviation when it comes to weather it’s often a case of you don’t know what you don’t know. So caution is a great thing.

Having a good team and mentor helps expand the knowledge base.

I learnt so much from my pilot mentor, it made me a better pilot and allowed me to experience a bunch of senarios I would not have experienced without him.

Well done team MH and JJ.

Andrew

I’d do it again without hesitation. Two pro pilots, working as a team, with all the right queues , in a capable aircraft, at a stupid long runway. What am I missing?

Very well executed approach and landing. In the vid weather was reported 400' & 3/4 mile.

*If* Mark or Jesse at some point said "lets try this approach in a way that no one has ever taught-higher/faster/steeper" then we can compare it to the Canadian MU2 crash. I do not see a comparision between the two ops at all.

When the chips were down they made sure to do everything as trained and as flown every other time ie. no improvising.

IMO very smart to stay coupled for this one.

Points well taken. The visual cues from video/camera were not enough to make me feel comfortable that you had enough comfortable visibility. Furthermore, if the tower is asking you to tell them when you are landing, then we know that visibility is low.

So to reiterate my answer given what I saw in the video/photo, there are/were not enough visual cues for me to note with certainty that I had a runway environment sufficient for ME to land on.

I would have gone missed at DA.

Is an auto-pilot coupled approach allowed to minima?

Pueblo was a Circuit City owned 560 whose crew ignored the 7 knot increase in Vref whilest in icing conditions and crashed killing 7? Sister ship landed without incident.

We had a trace of ice.

One clarification on my comment that it was clear after 30mimutes. The nature of lake effect snow is that it comes and it goes. As you saw in th video we were VFR until 400feet and then it went IMC. As we drove to the office we encountered unrestricted viz and near white out conditions several times each. Just the nature of the game. We could of held, diverted and tried to catch it just right. We could have also come up empty each time.

My point is this wasn’t like landing at the same time a line of embedded CB’s passed through and had we waited it out it would have been fine.