The Ryanair internal report into the Düsseldorf-Rome Ciampino flight describes the weather around the destination airport as being crowded with localised storms. During the descent toward the airport the crew had to make numerous re-routeings to avoid them. In addition, the runway in use was changed from 15 to 33, and the aircraft was subjected to considerable turbulence. Finally, the crew requested diversion to Rome Fiumicino because there was a storm over Ciampino, but did not reset the flight management computer for Fiumicino and failed to carry out the approach checks, says the report, so they were deprived of navigation display position information relative to runway in use 34R.

Despite vectors from air traffic control the aircraft went through the instrument landing system localiser for 34R, and air traffic control tried to help them pick up the ILS for 34L, but the captain was having trouble controlling the aircraft in turbulence and failed to establish on the parallel ILS. At this point the co-pilot intervened (see main story) and the crew, who reported several bank angle warnings at this point, abandoned the approach, requesting diversion to Pescara. Although cleared for a straight-in approach to runway 04, they had to carry out a descending orbit to lose height about 7nm (13km) from the threshold before making a safe landing.

Source: Flight International