The Kuwait to Paris leg went fine, although it was a bit sticky at the end. It was my leg, and the weather in Paris was bad—fog. There is a visibility sensing system called RVR (runway visual range) that measures the visibility at ground level on the approach end of a runway. You have to have a certain minimum visibility to begin the approach. At Paris Charles de Gaulle the requirement is for 800 meters for us. The RVR was 1000 meters on our arrival, so we were legal to begin the approach. They were also reporting a ceiling of 16 feet. Yes, sixteen. I don't know why they bother to report that low a ceiling. All that means is that the fog is right down on the deck. In the U.S. they would just say “sky obscured, ceiling zero”, but at CDG they apparently just accept whatever the automated equipment is saying. We're required to have a 200 foot ceiling, but there's a caveat that says you can begin the approach but cannot land unless you have the runway environment in sight at the 200 foot minimum. As everyone knows, the approach lights are very bright and, at night, they cut through a lot of fog. If you can see the approach lights (or stretching it if you can see the glow from the approach lights—that's a little illegal) you can continue the approach. Actually, we didn't see the approach lights themselves until 100 feet.

I was surprised the captain let me fly the approach. Technically speaking, he wasn't supposed to by Tower's rules, which require the captain to fly the approach when the visibility is less than three quarters of a mile, but he did and I was glad of it. On low vis approaches, it's Tower's unofficial policy to let the autopilot fly the approach until you have the runway in sight. I prefer the Evergreen method of just using the flight director. That removes the need for a last moment transfer of control from autopilot to manual flight but incurs the need for the pilot to be accurate all the way down the glidepath. The last time I tried that, the captain I was with objected when I clicked off the autopilot. So, to preclude last minute problems, I told this captain of my preference but said I would be happy to let the autopilot take it down to minimums if he wished. At the first he said no problem, but then as we got closer and reports of further reduction in vis and ceiling came through, he said he thought he would be more comfortable doing a coupled approach, an approach using the autopilot.

Anyway, at the 200 foot minimum he called approach lights in sight even though he had only the glow. I clicked off the autopilot at about 150 feet, and picked up the actual approach lights at 100 feet, saw the runway centerline lights starting into the flare at 50 feet—it was as close to a zero-zero approach as you dare come with an old 747 with the autoland features removed. The touchdown was even a greaser, but when we turned off the runway we couldn't see much, couldn't see the signs to figure out which taxiway we were on and had to get help from the ASR (airport surveillance radar—it gives the tower a picture of where aircraft are on the ground) to get to the ramp.

That was yesterday. That relatively great performance was followed, on my part, by a terrible performance today, and I am really discouraged. I seem to have suffered a major relapse in my ability to understand foreign controllers. Also, in this instance, I am flying with an Iranian captain, and I'm having real trouble understanding his accent. If I fail to survive probation at this company, it will probably be because of my problems understanding these controllers. Adding to the problem was that our route of flight was an unfamiliar to me, through Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia.... The captain, of course, was having no trouble at all understanding. He spoke like many of them, spent 20 years flying these routes for Iran Air before the fall of the Shah, and I'm sure was getting really tired of my inability to understand. My only consolation is knowing that if I was with an American captain, he would be having nearly as much trouble as I in understanding.