What visibility?!

It's Saturday morning, my second morning after 3 days off. I'm flying with a Captain I know well on a brand new, healthy aircraft. The sky is completely clear and the weather forecasts are optimistic ... I'm thinking this will be a good, easy day flying to Singapore via Kuching.

We board quickly and depart 10 minutes ahead of schedule and are granted unrestricted climb to FL380 and more or less direct to destination, there even is a nice 30kt tailwind pushing us along through the clear blue sky. I'm thinking this is a good start, and things can only get better right?

40 minutes later the Captain has just checked Kuching's ATIS. Visibility 200 meters, overcast 100ft. The look on his face is indescribable: "what was the forecast?!" I fumble for the weather... "unlimited visibility, CAVOK" So much for optimistic weather forecasts...

A few miles later Kuching Director confirms the conditions ... the visibility is now 600 meters but that still is below our minima of 800m. We decide to hold for a while to see if this surprise fog will burn off. As I plan the diversion I'm starting to think today isn't really a good day after all. Kuching comes into view about 50 miles ahead and it looks like a winter wonderland with the rather steep cartoonish hills poking out of a very low layer of cloud which is inconveniently sitting on the ground.

Just as we reach the holding fix the visibility increases to 800 meters (or minima) so we decide to give it a try and get vectored onto the ILS. It's still a beautiful clear day at 3000ft but instead of seeing ground when I look down I see cloud, which isn't normal.

1000ft descending on the ILS and we're still above the layer of cloud but there are holes here and there through which I can see bits of a city - the odd road, half a house, etc.

We enter the cloud at 500ft - the lowest we can descend to is 245ft before going around - and right on cue at minima there is a tiny gap in the clouds and the runway comes into sight so we continue and land, smoothly, 15 minutes ahead of schedule and I have enough time to go for a walk in the terminal and find some breakfast. Today is a good day.

Throughout the approach we were constantly seconds from holding/going-around/diverting when the weather conditions changed and allowed us to continue - as if the whole thing was a well scripted suspense novel. I only wish I had remembered to get the camera out of the bag and film it all.

S.