IFR approach plates

[RTN11]

The free plates available from the NATS website don't show the minimum visibility required to commence the approach. Is there a reason for this, and where are you supposed to find this information?

[Genghis the Engineer]

They don't show DA/DH either.

The following is gratuitously copied and pasted from Wikipedia, but I'm pretty certain it comes straight from one of the ICAO annexes (and match those in CPL/ATPL groundschool notes)...

There are three categories of ILS which support similarly named categories of operation. Information below is based on ICAO; certain states may have filed differences.

Category I (CAT I) – A precision instrument approach and landing with a decision height not lower than 200 feet (61 m) above touchdown zone elevation and with either a visibility not less than 800 meters (2,600 ft) or a runway visual range not less than 550 meters (1,800 ft).
Category II (CAT II) – A precision instrument approach and landing with a decision height lower than 200 feet (61 m) above touchdown zone elevation but not lower than 100 feet (30 m), and a runway visual range not less than 300 meters (980 ft) for aircraft approach category A, B, C and not less than 350 meters (1,150 ft) for aircraft approach category D.
Category III (CAT III) is subdivided into three sections:
Category III A – A precision instrument approach and landing with:
a) a decision height lower than 100 feet (30 m) above touchdown zone elevation, or no decision height (alert height); and
b) a runway visual range not less than 200 meters (660 ft).
Category III B – A precision instrument approach and landing with:
a) a decision height lower than 50 feet (15 m) above touchdown zone elevation, or no decision height (alert height); and
b) a runway visual range less than 200 meters (660 ft) but not less than 75 meters (246 ft). Autopilot is used until taxi-speed. In the United States, FAA criteria for CAT III B runway visual range allows readings as low as 150 ft (46 m).
Category III C – A precision instrument approach and landing with no decision height and no runway visual range limitations. This category is not yet in operation anywhere in the world, as it requires guidance to taxi in zero visibility as well. "Category III C" is not mentioned in EU-OPS. Category III B is currently the best available system.

So, I suspect I'll be corrected shortly, but I *think* that minima are normally the greater of:

(1) Those for that category of ILS
(2) Those for the captain's licence minima
(3) Those determined by company SOPs / captain's decision.

Both for RVR and DH.

However, this leads to a really good question - if you only are using AIP data, and the airport has declared greater minima, how do you know???

G

[madlandrover]

The AIP has it - Generic Aerodromes section AD 1.1, Section 4.2 onwards. Essentially the RVR requirements are derived from the DH/MDH, derived from the OCH on the plate. Bit too long to copy & paste here... Goodness knows why the info can't be put on the plate like a Jeppesen/Aerad equivalent, possible a liability issue?

[Marchettiman]

How ludicrous! So the CAA, who design the approaches and put us under a legal responsibility to abide by their profiles and minima, then don't provide the mandated information in a concise, readable format that is useable in the cockpit by a pilot who doesn't have a brief case full of very expensive Jepp charts for the whole of Europe, must be culpable if we use their charts and then fly into the ground.
I must warn my executors to watch out for that one!

[FlyingStone]

Well, I think all countries (members of the ICAO) have to produce their own charts, which have to be compliant with the ICAO standards. As you noticed, these charts are useless for practical information, but they are perhaps more useful for accurate studying of the approach procedure, they usually show much more obstacles (even less "important"). I can try and dig some stuff, but I think the operator/pilot is responsible for calculating their own minimums according to type of operation you're doing - if you buy/get Jeppesen charts, somebody has done it for you, otherwise you can do it the all way, by adding some factors to OCA/OCH and you get MDA/MDH or DA/DH. I'm always surprised when some people think OCA+50 is DA and then they try to convince you Jeppesen plates are an enormous waste of money :=

Simply put: charts found in AIP don't belong in cockpit.

[Spitoon]

Goodness knows why the info can't be put on the plate like a Jeppesen/Aerad equivalent, possible a liability issue?As FlyingStone points out it's rather more a matter of ICAO Standards.

[IO540]

This is why most of the world flies on Jepps, and most serious pilots have a friendly airline pilot who gets them Jepp plates ;)

And Jepp are laughing all the way to the bank, despite all these "free plates" being around...

When I asked the UK CAA head of charting why they don't produce plates which would be directly cockpit usable (which would not take any more work than what they do now) his reply (face to face) was that "they are not in the business of competing with commercial providers".

You could take that statement in different ways, including that Jepp pay the CAA money to keep doing this. I am pretty sure they don't, but at the same time there is an under the table armistice between Jepp and various national CAAs, following the famous Australian court case where the CAA there sued Jepp for breach of copyright. Obviously, Jepp do rip off the national AIPs... The settlement remains completely secret and other secret deals have prob99 been done with other CAAs, but as soon as any CAA takes money under such a deal they are obliged to not compete. In the same was as if the UK CAA licenses its electronic charts exclusively to Memory Map they cannot then publish them directly - regardless of any safety considerations.

There has been a similar long-running "situation" with Jepp and Eurocontrol, which for many years prevented Eurocontrol providing any tools for developing IFR routings. Jepp make many millions providing bizjet flight services whose principal "black art" component has been route development. Any monkey can book hotels...

[Contacttower]

Well French AIP plates have all the info on them so there isn't much excuse...

[Piltdown Man]

Genghis has it spot on. These charts are to enable chart manufacturers to have a legal master upon which they can create their own charts. But the big question is, is it legal to use the minima straight off an approach chart? Because how can Jeppesen possibly know the status of a pilot or an operator's minimas? All they can publish is the absolute system minima as mandated by each national state. So if you are not capable of working out your minima on an approach, you shouldn't be there. And for what it's worth, you can use Jepp's to start a fire as far as I am concerned. I'll stick with Aerad/Thales - I prefer the presentation.

PM

[172_driver]

In simple terms, the DA for a CAT1 becomes the higher of:

- OCA/H, published in AIP
- System minima, for ILS 200 ft

On some approaches the OCA/H is more limiting than system minima.

With the DA (actually DH) in mind, EU-OPS/national regulations provide tables for minimum allowed RVR for a particular DH which is also dependent on approach light facilities available.

So it is possible to work out all the information with the AIP plates, but it takes a bit of work. I don't like the presentation of (Swedish) AIP either, but maybe because I am so used to the Jeppesen charts?

[Genghis the Engineer]

Put it another way.

I'm an IMC holder, so know that my DH will be 500ft on a PA and 600ft on an NPA. In theory some airports it might be higher, in reality it never is. Similarly, my RVR minimum is always going to be 1800m.

Knowing that, using an AIP plate is very easy. Not routinely having access to Jepps or Aerad, I decided whatever the school had to use AIP plates exclusively halfway through the rating course - I passed my skill test using them, and have used nothing elsesince.

I know what IRI who also always uses AIP plates, so they can be used for full IR flying as well.

G

[A and C]

The main problem is that people on this forum are to tight to pay for a good service and despite spending large amounts on renting or owning aircraft won't pay for information that is vital for safe operation of the aircraft.

The idea that you can just use the system minima and add a bit is utterly stupid, it also fails to give the required RVR for the approach that you are using.

Enough of planning now for some practical application, having written down the minima for the approach you are going to do (because it's not on the plate that you got from the AIP) what happens when the GS is inop or the wind changes and you have to land circle to land on another runway or have you got the minima in the case of ALS failure?

These are all situations that you could very well find yourself in and not one
that you would want to deal with while shuffling five or six photocopies while flying in IMC.

Having all the data clearly and logically before you on one plate keeps the cockpit workload down and gives you the most time to devote to flying the aircraft, most of the readers of this forum are low time IFR pilots who only fly
IFR approaches once or twice a month, these are the very people who need to keep the cockpit workload in check.


Personally I use Jepps (on iPad) but have also used the far inferior EAG plates, these people took over AERAD and had failed to Match the former AERAD quality.

[Mike Cross]

In the same was as if the UK CAA licenses its electronic charts exclusively to Memory Map they cannot then publish them directly - regardless of any safety considerations.

Not so. The CAA does not have any electronic charts to license. Copyright in the base map belongs to Ordnance Survey. The Aeronautical Data is an interesting question, copyright will belong I suspect to any number of people. The ICAO charts are produced by NATS under contract to CAA but incorporate data provided by a number of sources, for example I believe the obstacles database comes from the RAF. Memory Map licenses the data from OS and CAA/NATS.

This points up the need for a wider debate on the availability of data. I have for some time been pressing for AIS to provide a programmatic interface for NOTAM. At the moment the interface is via the AIS website. You have to fill in the parameters on the screen and the site runs a query on the database and returns the results in a standard format.

Now consider what would happen if you had a published standard for a query that would return the data in a standard format (probably xml). Your favourite flight planning software already knows all of the details of your aircraft and flight and would be able to send the query, receive the data, and present it to you. Now extend the concept to MET, FPL and GAR/SB and Robert is your proverbial uncle. Goodbye to having to input duplicate data into AIS, Met Office, AFPEX and NCU.

Here's a very basic example of getting data in a simple way.
http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/index.php?submit=1&station_ids=EDDB&chk_metars=on&chk_tafs=on&std_trans=translatedproduces verbose TAF & METAR for Berlin. You can see the result by clicking
here. (http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/index.php?submit=1&station_ids=EDDB&chk_metars=on&chk_tafs=on&std_trans=translated)
Change the ICAO indicator and you change the result, putting more than one ICAO with commas between them gives the result for all of them and changing the other parameters will also change what you get. A piece of cake for your average bit of flight planning software.
Details here. (http://aviationweather.gov/static/faq/)

When AIXM goes live it will radically change the rules. Up to now Jepp et al have had a labour intensive job to take the data from its published format and get it into their databases. AIXM will change that by providing the data in a standardised machine readable format.

How readily available the data will be remains a moot point.

Mike

[IO540]

Sure, the UK VFR charts have copyright from multiple parties, but the principle remains. MM would sue if they got bypassed.

I did suggest to the CAA that they can ditch the OS for the topo underlays, because the data has been in the PD for many years, or there are cheaper sources. But they seem to want to have a liability fallback, and also I suspect they have lost interest in doing anything too novel.

Re pilots being too tight, the issue is that Jepps for Europe, VFR+IFR, is best part of £2000/year. I would not describe that as reasonable for a typical IFR private pilot who will at most be doing say 150hrs/year TT, of which maybe 50% might be full IFR, and many trips will be repeats so no new paperwork is required except updates.

There is no legal way to reduce the cost. Obviously, practically, one can take advantage of the four-machine-install concession to split it four ways, and lots of people do that. That is still £500/year! You could get a flying club to buy Jeppview, install it on a PC in the hangar, and then many people could share the facility but not many flying clubs are sufficiently cohesive to get an uptake on that.

Jepp have no interest in reducing the price because they make money from commercial users, and they will pay any price.

This is why the little people are trying to fly with the AIP plates.

[Contacttower]

I have a Jepp subscription for the UK & Ireland which also covers a bit of northern Europe as well. Realistically I'm not going to buy a European one for the occasional trip to France or further afield. I've long thought that Jeppesen is a bit of a rip off despite overall being a good product.

As it happens for France the AIP plates display both MDA/DA and RVR values, I'm right in the middle of downloading a number of them to my iPad and then they will be perfectly usable for free.

The problem is that not everyone produces good charts like the French do, the Irish ones for example I find barely understandable.

[NorthSouth]

GCAP (http://www.gcap.co.uk/) publishes approach plates optimised for GA use and they have the visibility minima on them too.

NS

[Genghis the Engineer]

GCAP (http://www.gcap.co.uk/) publishes approach plates optimised for GA use and they have the visibility minima on them too.

NS

Well done and thanks for posting that, which is really interesting - cat A optimised and 54p each / £54pa is a lot better for most of us than Jepp. I also notice that I can download the lot for an eBook/iPad for that, which would be useful.

Anybody actually used them?

G

[Contacttower]

Anybody actually used them?

Well I might be now...;) I think they look quite good for what they are, very simple and without any of the clutter you get with some charts.

I've already paid Mr Jepp some huge amount of money for UK charts but I noticed a few states in the GCAP database like Portugal and Norway for example which might one day come in useful...they not anywhere near complete though for outside of the UK.

I don't know if they have any aspirations to expand...?

[NorthSouth]

They're very much user-driven so if you have a requirement they'll consider it.

NS