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hence, oxygen masks. 
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Ya know they put, âNOT FOR PREFLIGHT/INFLIGHT USEâ on some MREs for a reason! 
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â99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beerâŠâ
I had a little concern about 15 mins ago when the bird began getting into a pitch oscillation that gradually increased in intensity to a maximum of about +/- 200 ft. I checked pitot heat and all of the deicing gear, then looked for a fuel imbalance, not that I would know how to manage it. Jester was no help. He has declared himself the mission commander, turned off his displays, and told me to deal with it. He mentioned thatâs why I make the big bucks and have all of the girlfriends. âHow about doing some of that pilot s@#1t.â
About the time I began reaching for the magic button toggle, then darn thing began returning to pitch neutral. OK.
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Most realistic.
Module.
Ever.
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Just had a cool thing happen. I am running Live traffic and am just beyond midway over the Atlantic. Another aircraft just passed me on a reciprocal heading, about a 1000 ft below and offset to starboard a couple of thousand feet.
For @smokinhole , @PaulRix , and other Spikers who do this for a living, respect 
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It is pretty cool when you pass another airplane like that, out in the middle of a very large ocean. I havenât done an Atlantic crossing since before the pandemic. I kind of miss those trips.
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We ended up taking Birmingham as an alternate. The west coast of England looked promising, but the further east we flew, the less optimistic we remained. I tried to get the big bird into Lakenheath, but it was 200m visibility in heavy freezing fog. I couldnât get the approach to couple, but tried anyway. We shot one approach and it was like flying inside a gray, wet, wool sock. In the dark. I bailed at 1000 without any lights visible.
EGBB with 2000 broken and a 10,000 ft runway sounded a lot more survivable. With 52k lbs of fuel left, we probably could have made it to Svalbard, but what fun would that be.
âYou happy that I didnât orphan your kids tough guy?â
They parked us on a little apron away from the terminal. Probably donât see many of these 'round these parts, hee hee. But from what we could see of the Birmingham airport, it looks like it may have been given the bespoke treatment.
Block time: 6:57.
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We flew an approach like that into White Plains a few weeks agoâŠ. The airplane ahead of us went missed, we got lucky and saw the lead in lights right at minimums. 
Just like in the sim (except both engines were working and there wasnât a sim instructor to make us go around anyway)âŠ.
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Eye, youâre a braver man than I Mr Paul. Well done.
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I was just Pilot Monitoring on that approach, nervously counting down the feet above minimums and hoping that we would have more luck than the guy ahead of us.
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Hereâs a random question on minimumsâŠ.
As the pilots do you decide your own minimums, or is this down to weather, aircraft type, specific airports or approach charts?
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On the most basic level the charted approach dictates the mins, determined by the type of approach, (precision, non-precision, straight in, circling, etc).
These mins are derived by the publisher (e.g. FAA) according to standard criteria and the peculiarities of the airport (terrain, lighting, signal reception, etc).
Beyond that, a chart may display different mins for the approach speed of different aircraft (i.e. Category A, B, CâŠ) and might also have mins based on the equipment of different aircraft, LPV vs LNAV/VNAV for example.
Then you have certain aircrew training specific approaches/minimums, like CAT II and III ILS where specifically trained crews can fly specifically equipped aircraft to lower than standard mins.
So, the short version is that most pilots fly basic approaches according to their approach plates, approach speed category, and aircraft equipment.
And some pilots/aircraft get special training/equipment to fly to lower minimums.
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