Airport.

[madmanxpilot]

7 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

"Somebody" decided that the lighting was superfluous to requirements.

EZY said they wanted 1800m. They got that at the expense of everything else because the people making the decisions didn’t realise the consequences of downgrading the lights at that time.

[offshoremanxman]

8 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said:

because the people making the decisions didn’t realise the consequences of downgrading the lights at that time.

How can anyone who is paid to run an airport be that stupid? 

[WTF]

1 minute ago, offshoremanxman said:

How can anyone who is paid to run an airport be that stupid? 

we are really good at finding them though.

[code99]

10 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said:

EZY said they wanted 1800m. They got that at the expense of everything else because the people making the decisions didn’t realise the consequences of downgrading the lights at that time.

 

11 minutes ago, madmanxpilot said:

I just don’t understand why it is not a priority for IOMG to sort it once and for all, they obviously do not appreciate the cost and inconvenience this stuff causes.

Maybe it’s time to go nuclear about it and not waste time pussy footing about. The public need to know the true level of incompetence that is oozing from the offices at EGNS.

Apologies if this question had been asked before (or if the answer is obvious), but in your opinion, were there physical or technical reasons why when the current airport navigational lighting ‘system’ was installed that it did not cover a larger area? E.g., was there insufficient land available to upgrade/ install more lighting because of housing in the way, the proximity to the sea, etc?  

[cissolt]

1 hour ago, snowman said:

G-LMTD operated the second attempt to depart and landed in Heathrow.

 

G-LMTC was the original operating aircraft, so presumably it's a tech issue 

I had a technical issues with lmtc two weeks.ago, burst tire I believe?  Hard to believe that this plane has so.many technical issues.  Do they publish a repair schedule?

[Banker]

21 minutes ago, offshoremanxman said:

How can anyone who is paid to run an airport be that stupid? 

Any relation?

[madmanxpilot]

1 hour ago, code99 said:

 

Apologies if this question had been asked before (or if the answer is obvious), but in your opinion, were there physical or technical reasons why when the current airport navigational lighting ‘system’ was installed that it did not cover a larger area? E.g., was there insufficient land available to upgrade/ install more lighting because of housing in the way, the proximity to the sea, etc?  

In short, no.

There used to be a gantry that extended out into the sea that had the approach lights mounted on it. This gantry was effectively replaced by the runway extension.

Currently, on runway 26 the approach lights extend 360 metres out from the runway threshold, they are all on land to the east of the runway. They would need to go out to 720 metres to get the ‘FULL’ classification, allowing approaches to be made in 550 metres visibility.

I have heard those in power down at the airport cite the fact that the sea floor drops off very sharply and would make the engineering required to extend these lights difficult. However, I do not accept that and believe it is one man’s uninformed opinion that is carrying sway.

If you look at a bathymetric chart for that area, the water is no deeper than 17 metres where the new gantry would need to be. Now I’m no civil engineer, but that surely isn’t a problem!

An attached chart shows the sea depths in metres. The lighting gantry would need to you out about 360 metres, which is equal to about 15% of the length of the Langness peninsula, so you can see we don’t get very deep at all.

There are enough wind turbines out there in deeper water, so the skills and technology required for the sub sea engineering is obviously readily at hand.

I’ve also attached a series of tables which show, highlighted in yellow, a description of the runway lights at Ronaldsway - the second column of the top table shows the extent of the approach lights in metres - 360 on runway 26.

The second table shows how approach lights are classified - as we have 360 metres, you can see that we fall into the basic (BALS) category which is for approach lights that extend between 210 and 419 metres from the runway.

The bottom table shows what approach minima to can get with each lighting category. As we are BALS we need 1000 metres RVR (runway visual range) whereas if we had those full lights we’d have 550 metres.

One point that need to be made is that unless you’ve been sat in the cockpit of an aeroplane making an approach in poor weather with basic approach lights, you will not appreciate how difficult it is to obtain the required visual reference to land EVEN IF the visibility allows for an approach to be made (ie greater than 1000 metres) when the cloud is at or below 100 feet. This situation happens quite regularly, but because the lights don’t extend out very far,  at the decision height of 200 feet, they are too far ahead of you to be seen and a missed approach is mandatory.

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by madmanxpilot
Typos

[HappyDay22]

2 hours ago, Banker said:

Liverpool easyJet has just landed, anyone know what happens to all Iom passengers on Malaga flight?

Operating an Overnight Delay. Should now be around tomorrow Lunch Time.

[asitis]

4 hours ago, offshoremanxman said:

How on earth did we spend £70M extending the runway and not upgrade the lighting at the same time? 

We actually downgraded the lighting, but of course no one would listen to those who knew about such things ! We relied on a premier league bullshitter who managed to spend god knows how many millions and got us to todays position. I fear we are about to do it all again.

[madmanxpilot]

These two screenshots, roughly to the same scale and orientation show with greater clarity than my earlier post, that the deepest water that a 360 metre lighting gantry would encounter is 17m.

Edited April 29, 2023 by madmanxpilot

[StCatherine]

LHR Logan air was in the air over 3hrs - just landed.

[Cambon]

Sorry, but I don’t think the lighting was downgraded. It is pretty much the same as it was before the runway extension. Yes, it should have been upgraded, even if just to  the end of the extension. But it was not downgraded. 

[finlo]

3 minutes ago, Cambon said:

Sorry, but I don’t think the lighting was downgraded. It is pretty much the same as it was before the runway extension. Yes, it should have been upgraded, even if just to  the end of the extension. But it was not downgraded. 

Maybe they swapped the bulbs for those miserable energy saving CFL's?

[The Port Soderick Herald]

2 hours ago, finlo said:

Maybe they swapped the bulbs for those miserable energy saving CFL's?

Perhaps. The airport should certainly be the focus of more adverse online comment to kick things off with. 

https://portsoderickherald.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/iom-airport-news/

[madmanxpilot]

11 hours ago, Cambon said:

Sorry, but I don’t think the lighting was downgraded. It is pretty much the same as it was before the runway extension. Yes, it should have been upgraded, even if just to  the end of the extension. But it was not downgraded. 

It certainly was downgraded.
 

The whole approach lighting system to runway 26, including the gantry that extended eastward into the sea, was removed during the runway extension project. It was replaced with a much shorter version of only land based lights and no gantry.

Prior to this work on the extension, the approach lights to runway 26 were long enough to fall into the intermediate category - IALS - allowing for approaches to be made in 700 metres. After the extension was built they didn’t extend out as far and fell into basic category - BALS - allowing for approaches in only 1000 metres. That is an absolute fact as I was operating in and out of the place pre and post extension and was very much concerned about it at the time.

Edited April 30, 2023 by madmanxpilot