System

Visual area penetrations have become a challenging problem for the FAA, airports and pilots. First, keeping track of them can be a moving target. Then theres the conflict between the hazard of visual area obstacles and the safety benefit of using an advisory glidepath. Although weve covered various aspects of this topic in the April and July 2013 issues of IFR, recent changes could affect approaches you fly.

A solid understanding of the rules and types of course reversals on an approach is essential. Course reversals are part of the FAAs guidance for IPCs. So, if you come out of proficiency training without feeling good about them, you didnt get your moneys worth. Regardless, you should be familiar, lest you hear unable radar vectors in the soup when you least expect it.

NextGen is such a simple word, yet it implies so much. This FAA effort to redesign the entire National Airspace Systems underlying technology and procedures has been underway for years and will continue for many more. Billions of dollars and millions of hours have been dedicated to new systems, new airspace design and new user training.

Technically advanced aircraft (TAA)-those with a primary flight display (PFD), multi-function display (MFD), and GPS-are sexy. Pilots are drawn to them like Pooh Bear to honey. Besides being eye-catching, TAA attempt to address some of the biggest problems in aviation by providing pilots with a lot of supplementary safety information. Moving maps designed to improve situational awareness make it almost impossible to get lost. Databases store more information at the touch of a button than…

In July 2013, we published "GPS Alphabet Soup" covering the five types of GPS approaches in some depth. A reader suggested a follow-on article...

The Asiana Airlines flight crew mismanaged the descent of a 777 into San Francisco International Airport last July, the NTSB said in its probable-cause hearing in June. The pilots made several mistakes and by the time they decided to go around it was too late. The airplane hit the seawall, causing a fiery crash that killed three passengers and seriously injured 49. The board also found the complexities of the auto-throttle and autopilot flight director systems contributed to the crash, and should have been more clearly described both in Boeings documentation and in Asiana pilot training. Crew fatigue also was a factor. The board also said emergency responders on the scene, who ran over one of the crash victims with a fire truck, should have been better trained and equipped. The board followed up with 27 safety recommendations to the airline, Boeing, the aircraft firefighting group, and the city and county of San Francisco.

Flying an airplane involves multiple concepts from physics: Bernoullis principle, centrifugal force, Newtons law of gravity, to name a few. Theres one more natural law, though, that isnt in the science textbooks: the faster youre trying to get somewhere, the more likely youre going to get unexpectedly delayed.

While many of the regulations that govern our actions are clear, there are a large number that may seem vague or even leave room for unintended interpretations. For these reasons, it is possible to seek official and binding interpretations from FAAs legal department, either through a direct request or possibly more onerous encounters with the regulations.

lectric-powered airplanes may still be far from mainstream, but interest in this technology continues to grow. In late April, Airbus engineers successfully flew the E-Fan, a tandem two-seater with a pair of electric-powered ducted fans on the tail. The batteries, carried in the wings, provide 30 minutes of flight.

In aviation as in life, there are often multiple ways to accomplish a single task. I learned that lesson early in my training as a radar approach controller.

Were preparing for our flight from Santa Fe, N.M. and theres been news of an unusually cold late spring storm moving through Colorado. On May 11, of all things, winter storm warnings are already up for Wyoming and much of Colorado. Our bumbling friend Dave called ahead and unfortunately most of the resorts like Aspen and Telluride had already closed for the season (What a waste, he complained.) but we found that Arapahoe Basin is still open. So our quest is to get to Denver.

The Terminal Arrival Area has been dissected and rehashed a lot. For those of us who became instrument rated when, say, Loran was cutting-edge technology, the TAA is a bit of a paradigm shift for approach planning. If you were raised /G, its just another navigation parameter.