Abort Landing

[meat]

Originally Posted by AMF

Last year,

I was flying into Gulfport, MS for a Christmas party at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi.

As we approached the coast, there was what seemed to be a LOW lying cloud COVERING the entire area (most meteorologists call that FOG) as we flew past the airport to turn around for a Southern facing landing, you couldn't see ANYTHING, the ONLY thing you could see was the cooling tower of the power plant. (which shows you just how low the clouds were).

As we descended for landing we started breaking into the fogs/clouds and you couldn't see squat. Then, I could barely makeout I-10 and thought (man, all the times I've landed here, we're awfully high to be landing at the airport, which is near the interstate).

well the fog got worse and you could see anything until you started to be able to makeout houses and such....THEN, what seemed to be 100 or so feet off the ground, it became apparent that the runway was on one heading and the plane's attitude was on a different heading (by about 30 degrees).....the pilot immediately jammed on the power and we pretty much executed a takeoff (we were VERY close to the ground).

All the people in the plane were wide eyed and white knuckled as the pilot came on saying..."folks it seems that the weather in Gulfport isn't going to allow us to land safely so we're rerouting to New Orleans...." we were all like "YA THINK!"

There wasn't a single person on the plane that complained.....that is until the airline left us parked at the terminal for almost 2 hours while they tried to figure out just what to do with everyone.

Well, THAT doesn't make any sense. Looking at the runway diagram, it appears that a southern approach on runway 18 in fog would be an incorrect thing to do. Runway 14/32 is the one that's ILS. A commercial carrier (as well as the tower) would know this.

Your pal,
Meat.