Braking action reports are a chance for me to play the "better safe than sorry" card. All it takes is one pilot to report a "poor" for me to not feel comfortable with an aircraft going into that airport without a plow or treatment. In fact, me NOT actioning that would put liability on me if something were to happen.
I have no problem calling towers regularly to get updated reports on runway conditions, pilot reports, and what their plow/treatment schedule is. I then share it with my team. Though I wish some of my teammates told me when they called the tower as well, as it is embarrassing to hear "Didn't your airline just call me?"
I agree. My problem really isn't how it is handled by our dispatchers, but rather how subjective the data is. Braking action reported fair? Ok, by what? Car, truck, 172, etc. I suppose I'll provide an example.
Two weeks or so ago we were flying IAD-ROC. Dispatcher did an awesome job getting us prepared to go up there. Winds were gusting to the upper 40s and it was snowing. Dispatch release wasn't ready, so we called the dispatcher to see what was happening, we assumed it was related to the weather. He said he was waiting to hear back from ROC tower. When he heard back braking action for the long runway was reported good, but the short runway was fair. Unfortunately the long runway would give us a borderline unacceptable crosswind under these conditions. No problem, he ran the numbers for the short runway and because of such a strong headwind component, we would be fine. We're happy with it and blast off to ROC.
I go to run the landing data, even with the wind and the and thrust reverser credit, the data wasn't acceptable to us after we entered the "fair" modifier in the ACARS. It said we were within limits on the actual landing distance, but not the "required." One of those legal, but not safe issues. We ended up opting for the long runway because braking was still reported good. But if that had not been the case we would have been well over our crosswind limitation for braking less than good.
My point being I have no doubt the dispatcher entered the information correctly (we verified it on the paperwork) and found that we were clearly within limits before we dispatched. But because of the subjective nature of braking reports, we came up with more conservative numbers.
