longhauler wrote:MO11 wrote:xcltflyboy wrote:I'm guessing they had to use auto-land since forward visibility was essentially zero.
Not at El Paso.
No ILS at El Paso?
The A320 series is certified to do an autoland on any ILS runway. The only restriction is that when not Cat 2 or Cat 3, the runway environment may not be protected from taxying aircraft and anything outside of stable/unstabilised criteria requires a go-around. I am guessing in this instance, the airport kept the runway environment sterile to Cat 2/3 standards even though not a Cat 2/3 approach/runway.
However, since the airport doesn't have published Cat II/III approaches, those protected areas aren't marked on the airport and diagrams aren't available to controllers. I would bet there were fire trucks on the stub taxiways adjacent to the runway.