They Couldn't Land , They Did It Anyway | The Tragedy of TACA 390

This is the story of Taca airlines flight 390. On the 30th of may 2008 an airbus A320 was on hte ground at ELSalvador international airport, the plane would be making its way to Miami with stops in toncontin international airport in the honduras, ramon vileda morales airport also honduras. The first hop would take them into toncontin international airport. This airport had a reputation. The airport had a relatively short runway of 7000 feet and the runway that it did have was bounded by high terrain on all sides. The terrain is so high that a the go around holding altitude above the airport is at 9000 feet. At a normal airport you just line the plane up with the runway get on the ILS and follow that beacon all the way to the runway. Toncontin isnt like that due to the terrain almost all the arrivals use 02. Runway 20 is just too hard. That by no means makes the approach to runway 02 easy You have to descend towards the intermediate fix at an angle and then as you intersect the extended centerline you need to make a sharp left turn to get onto short final which is only a mile and half long. All while avoiding elevated ground. The flip side is that it gives us amazing shots like this. Oh yeah before i forget the valleys and hills around toncontin kicks up some hard turbulence. That is something that you have to contend with when youre low slow and in a bank and if you mess up the landing just a bit there is a cliff at the end of runway 02, this is an airport that will punish you if you make a mistake Just in case you were thinking that approach was too easy. This approach is so hard that the history channel, back when they were worth watching crowned this airport as the worlds second most dangerous airport. Put another way, this airport is kind of like the airport in paro bhutan, the one where you have to come over a mountain and then line up with no time left and then land. Its kind of like that with a cliff at the end of the runway and worse weather. This is what the crew of flight 390 had to deal with.before the plane left san salvador at 2:35 pm , then they got some bad news the weather at toncontin was bad, it was raining and the visibility was deteriorating so a decision was made to uplift some extra fuel onto the plane. Just incase they needed to hold or divert. With this taca flight 390 carrying 135 people lept into the air bound.for one of the worlds hardest approaches. In the air the pilots got a better idea as to the actual weather over the airport . Visibility had reduced to 2 kilometres and there were low clouds in the south and south west of the airport. They would have to deal with some bad weather but they should still be able to pull this off. The controllers give them clearance to descend down to 9000 feet. Once the plane was at 9000 feet the controllers set the plane up for an approach to runway 20 and handed the plane off to the tower. They would have to fly the approach to runway 02 then circle the airport and then land on runway 20. But as the pilots are setting the plane up for an approach to runway 20, the visibility gets so bad that the pilots have to call this approach off. The plane climbs out of the terrain and heads back to the VOR to start the approach all over again. At this point the captain tells his first officer that he did not want to use toga thrust for the go around to quote not make too much scandal”. I have no idea what that means, if youre from the region and you knew why a go around would be so scandalous please do let me know. I looked an I didnt find any noise ordinances that were too egregious that would elicit such a response from the captain. Anyway, the captain now wanted to try runway 02, he was of the opinion that if the winds stayed below a 5 knot tailwind component then they could try runway 02. As they circle the airport for the approach to runway 02 they keep getting weather readouts, at first it was 7 knots from 180 degrees then it was 10 knots from 200 degrees and then 10 knots from 19 degrees , these winds would not pose an issue to landing on runway 02, the crew decided to go