By the time of approach, Prestwick was under drizzle and a cloud-base that was almost solid at , forecast to continue from about 11:00 p.m. onwards, around the time the "Nijmegen" was approaching the airfield. As the flight had taken off late, they had not picked up the radio message broadcast by Prestwick airfield informing them of this. Parmentier was thus unaware of the deterioration in the weather: were he aware of it he would have been able to divert to Shannon. The routine weather reports broadcast from Prestwick had given a cloud cover of . No new forecasts, which would have told Parmentier of the expected decreased ceiling were broadcast. Nor did he know that already that evening two airliners from SAS had turned back rather than attempt a landing at Prestwick.