Large Transport; Low Wing; 2 Turbojet Eng
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness; Time Pressure; Troubleshooting; Workload
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Other / Unknown
General None Reported / Taken
Procedure; Weather; Airport
We were in contact with Victoria Terminal and we desired to obtain information from ATC on the latest runway conditions for our upcoming arrival/landing in BLI. Victoria Terminal disseminated runway condition information that was between 3 and 5 hours old. This was not of interest to us since it had been snowing during the time since these very outdated reports were issued and we were interested in the most up to date runway conditions. Victoria Terminal continued to offer outdated information so my First Officer established contact with BLI tower on the #2 radio while I continued to monitor Victoria Terminal on the #1 radio and ask for an extended downwind while we hoped to obtain updated runway conditions. BLI Tower offered my First Officer MU readings that were 'in the 30's' according to BLI Tower. Unfortunately this information was also nearly one hour old and it appeared to us that it had most likely been snowing at some point during the past hour since the MU readings were last taken. We were never able to get any runway condition information from BLI Tower that was less than 50 minutes old prior to our arrival and landing. Ultimately the decision was made to land with this outdated information since the field was VFR and we flew right past the airport on  our downwind vector where my First Officer was able to look down and see that the runway was mostly bare and had what appeared to be little clutter accumulation on the landing surface. Had we not been able to visually see the landing surface prior to landing I would not have been comfortable landing without an updated runway conditions report from the tower. The cause of this event was ATC's inability to provide recent and up to the minute runway conditions to us prior to landing. Considering the hot topic that landing performance/runway assessment/conditions have become over the past few years I was very disappointed to see the 'service' that was received from BLI Tower when we attempted to obtain the most recent runway conditions and MU readings. Overall BLI Tower's failure to provide timely and up to date runway conditions to us demonstrates to me that BLI Tower is either unable or unwilling to provide a level of service commensurate with the type of operations being conducted in and out of the airport. Considering the fact that it had been snowing on and off most of the night; combined with the short runway; it is bothersome to see BLI Tower's lackadaisical attitude on providing immediate and up to the minute runway conditions when requested by the crew of a transport category aircraft. I had another objection with BLI Tower allowing an air carrier aircraft to perform a high-power engine run where their jet blast was directed into the touchdown zone of our landing runway. When this most recent event is combined with the information provided in previous report; BLI Tower's operation does indeed show some serious deficiencies that need to be addressed sooner than later. BLI Tower needs to do a much better job in providing a service that's expected at an airport where transport category aircraft conduct scheduled operations.
An Air Carrier Captain commented that he was unable to obtain a current MU reading from BLI Tower prior to landing after a snow event.