Narrative:

The weather event that occurred during the course of the day compromised the safety of every aircraft that flew into msp. Management choose to remain landing and departing on runways 12L and 12R for a majority of the day with sustained winds from 030 to 060 at 15-25 knots and gusts over 30 knots on contaminated runways. Earlier in the day the containment was wet due to rain. Later in the shift it was freezing rain; then pellets; and finally snow. The issue I have with all of this is we have very well defined wind charts for each runway. We were well outside of tolerance for using the 12's with a contaminated runway. From what I overheard in the cab is that the main user said they were ok with the conditions to use the 12's instead of going to a single runway operation of runway 4. So the decision was made to stay on 12's until 'pilots started to complain'. We had a go-around on 12R by and due to windshear. The decision was then made to use runway 4 to land and depart around [mid afternoon] or so. That only lasted for about an hour then we went back to the 12's for the remainder of the night due to 'demand'. Now comes my other safety concern is that it's one thing to be out of tolerance for a true 'wet' runway due to rain; but [later in the evening] the freezing rain and snow came. We soon had reports of medium to poor braking on the 12's. There was zero concern about changing the runway configuration until [late at night]. For nearly 3 hours how we didn't have an airplane slide off the runway is still mind blowing to me. This storm was not a surprise. It was forecast at least 3-5 days out. We had every possible safety concern and complexity to go to a single runway operation yesterday. Icing; windshear; snow; swap's; deicing; braking actions; and extended time on position. Efficiency was chosen over true safety. If the wind charts are now just a slight 'recommendation' and not actually enforced then I don't know why we even have them.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Tower Controller reported Tower Supervisors did not comply with runway use directives during a period of snow and freezing rain.

Narrative: The weather event that occurred during the course of the day compromised the safety of every aircraft that flew into MSP. Management choose to remain landing and departing on Runways 12L and 12R for a majority of the day with sustained winds from 030 to 060 at 15-25 knots and gusts over 30 knots on contaminated runways. Earlier in the day the containment was wet due to rain. Later in the shift it was freezing rain; then pellets; and finally snow. The issue I have with all of this is we have very well defined wind charts for each runway. We were well outside of tolerance for using the 12's with a contaminated runway. From what I overheard in the cab is that the main user said they were OK with the conditions to use the 12's instead of going to a single runway operation of runway 4. So the decision was made to stay on 12's until 'pilots started to complain'. We had a go-around on 12R by and due to windshear. The decision was then made to use runway 4 to land and depart around [mid afternoon] or so. That only lasted for about an hour then we went back to the 12's for the remainder of the night due to 'demand'. Now comes my other safety concern is that it's one thing to be out of tolerance for a true 'wet' runway due to rain; but [later in the evening] the freezing rain and snow came. We soon had reports of medium to poor braking on the 12's. There was ZERO concern about changing the runway configuration until [late at night]. For nearly 3 hours how we didn't have an airplane slide off the runway is still mind blowing to me. This storm was NOT a surprise. It was forecast at least 3-5 days out. We had every possible safety concern and complexity to go to a single runway operation yesterday. Icing; windshear; snow; SWAP's; deicing; braking actions; and extended time on position. Efficiency was chosen over true safety. If the wind charts are now just a slight 'recommendation' and not actually enforced then I don't know why we even have them.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.