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This is the story of united express flight 4933. On the 4th of march 2019, an Embraer 145 flying for United express was making the flight from newark to presque isle. It was a cold winters day at presuqe isle and the the snow coated everything. The snow also made it quite hard for landing planes to well land. Information available to the pilots let them know that there was about a quarter inch of snow on the runway and the airport was trying its best to keep the runways clear of snow. As flight 4933 approached presque isle the pilots set the plane up to land at runway 01 at presque isle, they went over the procedures to land on the runway and they tuned the ILS beacon to land on the runway. The ILS would be absolutely essetntial in landing this plane today as the ILS or instrument landing system would take the plane most of the way in towards the airport and then once they were close enough to gain a visual lock on the runway the pilots would take over taking the embraer in all the way to the runway. Its not a complex system but it gets the job done. With the briefing done the pilots lined the jet with 31 people onboard with runway 01. The first officer was the pilot flying and at the start of the approach he had his head down looking down at his instruments, he was making sure that the airplane was where he expected it to be. At this point they were flying by their instruments, I mean looking outside wouldnt do you much good as all you could see would be snow. As the first officer looked up from his instruments to visually find the runway he saw just a whute expanse, he expected to see the thing grey outline of the runway out off in front of the plane but nope he just saw the white expanse. The runway that they had been flying towards was not there. The captain who was the pilot monitoring saw a small tower out in front of them and she called for an immediate go around. As the pilots pushed the throttles to max power the jets started to climb away from the ground but, I don't know if the pilots realized this at the time but the plane clipped the lightning rod of the tower as they went around. That was a close call if anything. As they went around the first officer asked the captain if she had seen the runway lights on their way down She said that she did see the lights and added “Its really white down there thats the problem”, the snow was really making life difficult for the pilots.
The captain couldnt understand why they couldnt find the runway, their instruments had told them that they were lined up with the runway but they werent, she came to the conclusion that they must have drifted off to the side as the first officer was transitioning from instrument flying to visual flying so for attempt number two she wanted the first officer to fly by instruments all the way down to the decision altitude. For this approach the decision altitude was 200 feet above ground level so when they were 200 feet off of the ground they had to go around if the pilots did not have the runway in sight, no questions asked. Thus the pilots set the plane up for approach number two, the plane latched onto the glideslope and the localizer the two radio beams that would take the plane all the way down to the decision altitude. The captain made sure that the runway lights were at maximum intensity by asking the maintenance workers on the ground, they were so when they got near the runway it would be lit up like a christmas tree. Approach number two went flawlessly until they reached the decision height. As they hit 200 feet the captain said “runway in sight 12 O’Clock”. The first officer couldnt find the runway he said “I’m stayin’ on the flight director ‘cause I don’t see it yet.”. The embraer 145 continued to drop. The piltots searched for the runway in the snowy expanse of presque isle but they couldnt find it, they were running out of time they were only a 100 feet off the ground the captain said “what the expletive and the first officer said “ I dont know what Im seein”
28 июл 2022
