KSBP 061756Z 15006KT 10SM -RA SCT010 BKN025 OVC042 15/13
KBFL 061754Z 00000KT 7SM CLR
flightaware.com/live/flight/ASH2 … /KPHX/KSBP
Everybody else is operating normally.
OK, they made it to Bakerspatch.
Reviewing the flight log I see they made it down to 3500 on the approach to SBP before going around. They never called the tower so I couldn’t hear any of the conversation.
3500 might indicate a hydraulic and or flap problem which required the extra 4000 feet of runway at BFL. Pure speculation on my part.
It was a foggy night at MSY and I was watching the airport monitor
www4.passur.com/msy.html (looks to be down now)
and there was an AA mad dog coming from DFW to land on 10. He got down to about 500 feet and then started climbing, did the missed approach and went around to line up again. This time he got down to about 800 feet and he went missed approach again. Now instead of trying it again, he flew all the way back to DFW! Not sure if that was a high minimums captain or there was some equipment out of service on the plane but everybody else got in on the first try except him.
I was actually making a poor joke about the high minimums, if I remember correctly (no jokes) it is +50 ft. to DH so i doubt that was really the factor in either case.
Other than a mechanical glitch the other somewhat remote possibility is that they got down to minimum diversion fuel and since the book says “go somewhere else” that’s what they did. If so it was kind of poor planning especially in the ASH case at SBP. They didn’t even finish the first approach.
in your case if it was really foggy it is possible the crew was not CAT II qualified and the RVR went way below minimums…hard to say.
Oh, in the case of ASH it looks like they landed, got fuel and went to SBP successfully, albeit 2:45 late.
There are several possibilities. Could have been a disabled aircraft on the only suitable runway. Could have been there was a storm cell parked right on the final approach course and they didn’t carry enough fuel to hold and wait for it to move. There’s more to weather than just what you see reported at the airport. It’s tough to guess without any information to go on.
All good possibilities, although SBP was ops normal. MSY I don’t know.
Not really sure what “ops normal” means. Is that a technical term? 
It’s what we use when operations are normal.