Cotton wool over the City of Johannesburg

I have just landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. The land of safari.

Unfortunately it is very very cold. We arrived into the morning of 1degree centigrade. It was indeed surprising for me. For I normally encounter JOhannesburg with heat & sun. It's still sunny & bright as usual. But the chill & dry climate really got into my throat. We all look like we smoke cigar whenever we breathed.

My surprise today is:
It was so foggy in the city when we arrived at 0610hrs. Bright & sunny but I was so shocked when I looked outside the window. I thought what I saw was the ocean/sea! But look closely it is actually the fog covering the city. We could only make out from the 4 factory chimneys! (Well, surely nobody can possibly place factory with chimneys in the sead?!)

We thought (or kinda hope for diversion. More $$$. Chance of 2 1/2times wage. hehe) there will be either circulating or diversion. It looks really impossible to land. When pilot announced 'Crew to stations', I thought they're just hoping for the better.
I could feel for the captain-in-training pilot. It would have been a tremendous pressure of test & decision.

So we sat quietly on our seat. Constantly looking outside. It really look like cotton wool covering the city. In my sleepy mind, disgusting thought like moth covers came across my mind.

Nearing landing, I really didn't think that they're serious about landing in that condition. In my opinion, or rather, my vision; the visibility is less than 100m. In fact to really see things clearly, it's actually a visibility of about less than 50m.

Now I really understand what the www.yahoo.com/weather's visibility is for. Not for me land airplane-lah of course,
but for possible drivers too.

We did land.

Not only we landed, it was incredible. Smooth & extremely safe, I wanted to clap. I was kinda disappointed that nobody did. Because European normally do.
Everything went extremely well.
Never have I felt this kind of pride for the pilots that SIA trained.
What looked like the most dangerous turned into the safest ride.

We praised the pilot for the landing. But the humble guy accredited to auto-pilot.
Auto-pilot or manual, the plane needs a man.
We had a great team that did that today.

Thank you for the safe flight.