Broken AWOS

[z987k]

How stupid is this...I was going into SLO one evening (at OO) and the field was reporting 1/2 mile. I could see half of the runway, but I had to do the ILS which took me to the fogged in part of the runway. I could have done a safer approach visually onto the other end and rolled out at relatively low speed into the foggy area, but them's the rules.

Could you circle? SBP has a tower iirc, and should they not have been able to say, vis = x so you could land on the other side?
OTH is a bitch of an airport where the whole west side(ocean) of the airport will go 400rvr, but the rest is clear and a million.

A question I do have is where does "Tower Visibility" fall in the hierarchy of atis/asos/rvr. Atis reads 1/4sm vis ....... tower vis 2 miles. Can you shoot the approach?

 

[Bumblebee]

Could you circle? SBP has a tower iirc, and should they not have been able to say, vis = x so you could land on the other side?
OTH is a bitch of an airport where the whole west side(ocean) of the airport will go 400rvr, but the rest is clear and a million.

A question I do have is where does "Tower Visibility" fall in the hierarchy of atis/asos/rvr. Atis reads 1/4sm vis ....... tower vis 2 miles. Can you shoot the approach?

the tower was closed and the circling mins were higher than the reported mins...


and yes OTH is one sumbitch at times... fun story about that place when we can share some debriefing fluid!

 

[Blackhawk]

Could you circle? SBP has a tower iirc, and should they not have been able to say, vis = x so you could land on the other side?
OTH is a bitch of an airport where the whole west side(ocean) of the airport will go 400rvr, but the rest is clear and a million.

A question I do have is where does "Tower Visibility" fall in the hierarchy of atis/asos/rvr. Atis reads 1/4sm vis ....... tower vis 2 miles. Can you shoot the approach?

I'm shooting from the hip but I believe tower visibility can be used. I remember a case I had in Gainesville years ago. The AWOS was on the east side of the field- the same side as the lake. Early one morning it was severe clear.... Except for a patch of fog just over the AWOS that was reporting the airport as below takeoff mins. We had to wait for tower to open, give us tower vis, then we could depart.

 

[C150J]

At my last 121 operation, it was emphasized that tower visibility was not controlling. The OM made mention that is it very similar to "flight visibility" and cannot be used to establish legality.

YMMV though - as Blackhawk said, it could've been different at other operators/FSDOs.

Looking for a source...

 

[jynxyjoe]

An FO and I were discussing a situation he'd run into last week.

Going into an uncontrolled airport (at night, but that's immaterial), where the weather report was calling for CAVU. 20 miles out, they picked up the AWOS which stated visibility was 1/4 miles. At 10 miles out they had the airport visually and saw the entire runway and terminal complex with no fog or obstructions to visibility. In fact, they saw no fog for miles and miles. For the sake of argument, lets assume that they could not cancel IFR until on the ground per opspecs.

They assumed that they could not land as the reported visibility was too low to start the approach. They held for about 10 minutes until the AWOS was reporting 1 mile and then they landed.

I'm thinking they could have just taken a visual approach and at that point the AWOS reported visibility no longer matters and as long as they maintain visual with the runway they are good to go. Right?

Back in Nam we'd just strafe the AWOS and then assault land. *sips beer queerly*