Recently on Fragrant Harbour someone mentioned that Cathay is considering banning circling approaches. Surely this has to be a deliberate distortion of the truth as it's the same as saying Cathay pilots are not up to circling approaches.
In days gone by it was mandatory to demonstrate the ability to circle and if you could not do it then the left seat was not for you. Circling is actually no more than a hands on numbers game so why even consider banning it ?

O.P.

Yes I'm sure all CX crews could safely conduct a circling approach.

You should be asking why in 2012 with ILS, VOR DME and RNAV approaches available at just about every Runway CX operate into should we even consider a circling approach??? FUK is about the only one, and even then in marginal weather you'd be nuts to circle considering 34 has an ILS.

Maybe it is time to consign the circling approach to the bin. Much safer easier options available.

Perhaps some North American drivers could confirm, but aren't circling approaches prohibited in some US airlines or at least prohibited by a/c type within the airline?

b.

I believe that the CAD initiated this issue.

How many CX aircraft have actually had to fly a real circling approach in the past decade anyway?

KA do often - into Busan. There's no other approach available if the wind is more than 10 knots from the South.

EK don't do visual approaches!:=

We occasionally circle in ANC. ILS 07R circle 32 (now 33)

I`d say this falls pretty heavily in the unsubstaintiated rumor department. Circling approaches aren`t dangerous it is just that they are usually not practiced to maintain real proficiency (due to lack of reasons to do them). These were designed in the days when small airplanes went to alot of small airports which were approach limited due to navaids or surveys; with FMS and GPS/GNSS this becomes less and less necessary. There is always an increased level of risk in any non precison approach but this is usually minimal when managed properly. When one has to do one it usually goes OK so long as appropriate thought and preparation is done beforehand. IMHO the Canarsie is a form of circling approach which will be around until the end of time.

With RNAV RNP approaches circling approaches will likely go the way of the ADF and the four course range in due time.

Its a fact. No more circling soon. It was written in some update by some boss - not just a rumor.

Yeah, well the truth is that most FDAP events at CX result from visual approaches. And that is in visual conditions, so makes sense that they would prevent the same behavior in more challenging IFR circling weather.

A 400 passenger jet has no business yanking and banking at minimums to stay within protected area. Just like it has no business flying 75year old NDB approaches, which is why Boeing has removed the ADF. They are worthless anyway with all their inherent errors.

Circling Approaches are a bit like Go Arounds. How often do you do one for real? Actually I have done far more Circling Approaches than Go Arounds (I guess I am just lucky with the weather). Yet like the latter, we are required to be proficient, and able to perform such manoeuvre instinctively. Perhaps each RT we should conduct a Circling Approach to maintain these skills? However, having said that, if they do go, I am not going to miss them at all. :ok:

They are history

"FOP completed a review of Circling Approaches on our network, assessed the threat posed by those approaches and considered how effectively crew managed the approaches and decided that Circling Approaches will no longer be an approved manoeuvre. Ops Part a will be amended shortly......."

from crews news.

So it is true!! What a sad state of affairs to see the skills of genuine pilots further erroded. I suppose it has something to do with the lowest common denominator.
" Learning that does not daily increase will daily decrease " ( Chinese proverb )

O.P.

Recall it was a botched circling approach at Avalon after which CASA waved its red card at Tiger. Maybe this new policy is a knee-jerk reaction to that. Circling approaches are hardly used but at least it's going to be in writing now.

Soon we won't be able to do landings either. Autolands are much safer you know!

Perhaps some North American drivers could confirm, but aren't circling approaches prohibited in some US airlines or at least prohibited by a/c type within the airline?

You'll carry a restriction on your ATP/type: "Circling Approach - VMC Only"

Banned in Gulfair after the A320 prang even though the guy was not even doing a " circling App". I like the previous post about transport, heavy jets not having any business banking & weaving all over the place looking for a runway. Ok for a Cessna 150.In my 747................no thanks. Blimey, my last straight in ILS was a bit like that...time to hang up the boots !

The visuals in simulators do not adequately depict the runway environment throughout the whole procedure. At our Airline circling can only be performed VMC. Charted minima for circling approaches are not to be used...

The visuals in simulators do not adequately depict the runway environment throughout the whole procedure. At our Airline circling can only be performed VMC. Charted minima for circling approaches are not to be used...


Same at Cathay, so all the whiners claiming we are less proficient are a bit late. Our minimums at CX are pretty much VFR as well, so don't know what the fuss is about.

The only thing we have lost is the absolutely useless demonstration in the simulator every other RT/PC cycle. You know the one, where you start a clock abeam and turn base at 30 seconds. You know, the visual procedure that you perform with reference to ... instruments. :ugh:

As mentioned previously, useless. We can still circle since VFR minimums are pretty much the same as our circling minimums. We just have to call it a visual approach. Semantics really. :hmm:

Here we go again an old fart thinking back........

I Remember the day we used to circle into places like Launceston at night at 400' Agl ( maybe a little higher but damn low ) in our little 733.......now that was fun ( not ):D

The year is 2012 and whilst we all like to think we fly like Chuck Yeager circling in a big Jet is just plain stupid now days with better safer options available.

Old fart talking here, so listen up:ok:

In the good old days, circling was fun, easily doable with fairly experienced skippers and f/os and nice cockpit gauges which allowed good crosschecks as both pilots alternated looking in and out. Even with the PM straining to look out monitoring the visual cues, obstacles, etc the layout of those old steam gauges allowed his peripheral vision to monitor engine/flight instrumentations with relative ease. Try doing that in today's CRT/LED displays...not that easy.

In times past, pilots get a real feel of the performance of the aircraft through good " endorsement training " with many takeoffs/landings, touch n gos in a real physical environment; now with this ZFT sim training thingy, endorsement training is a joke.

The circling involves full hands on flying for the PF with full concentration on the flight path, profile and performance management by feel, good eyeballing and of course, experience. The PM monitors both visually and through the instruments, helping to navigate if need to without being distracted with all the manipulating of dials, heading updates, etc as they now practise in the sim.

Different world out there today; so maybe circling may be done away with in the not too distant future!:{

Gleneagles,

Right, we need to now make sure that as we roll out on final on visual approach that the heading bug on the EFIS is set to runway heading! Miss that and you fail your command course!

You know, the visual procedure that you perform with reference to ... instruments. :ugh:
That's why one is inclined to cheat a bit with help from the instruments on a PC because in a visual circuit you can't see final when you're on base ...

Children of Magenta - YouTube

Great Video Polydras.
I've seen it before, but it always is a good reminder.

You mean AA teaches their pilots stuff ?

What a concept !

FG

they may as well just show this on the AEP day....beats the hell out of the pitiful efforts made towards fatigue, crm etc.

Edit: Sorry, wrong guy, I was thinking of a different video. This video is actually quite good and could certainly benefit the Cathay training culture. Our way of fixing all the problems with visual approaches was ...

... increase the automation and increase your tasks, like messing around with stop watches and building a visual approach in the FMC.

:ugh::ugh::ugh:

gleneagles is correct about round instruments making it easier to circle in IFR-VFR conditions. Back in the late 1970s Cathay operated a night arrival into Kemayoran which was the main airport for Djakarta. If a north wind was blowing it required running down RW18 ILS to 1000 feet and then breaking 45 degrees left, glancing at the second hand of the clock and heading out into the pitch black darkness of rural Indonesia. Sighting the dimly lit airport terminal building when half way around the turnback was the time to start breathing again and if the VARSI came up with the correct colours then all was well. Great sense of satisfaction from this one, sadly never to be experienced by todays operators.

Oval3Holer;
There are times when messing about with heading bugs and other so called aids is akin to puting legs on a snake.

O.P.

Although posted with good intentions, please save us from YouTube video lectures by some self-help preacher type, prancing around a stage in a heavily starched, creases ironed shirt, complete with designer tie and Cross pen in pocket, waving his arms in the air, laboriously telling us of the dangers of automation dependancy. We already know.
Just make sure these young, spotty faced First Officers can fly a raw data NDB approach, miss and hold, and your “automation dependency” worries will be over. And yes, I am an old fart, but never scratched an aeroplane, or even an air-plane.

Just make sure these young, spotty faced First Officers can fly a raw data NDB approach

you haven't been reading yr NTCs 'ol boy

Next week it'll be the ILS that's not allowed !

No wonder T&C's are spiraling downward. The skill set and level of competency that I had to demonstrate 20 years ago is being dumbed down, so that an airline pilot can be trained easily and without any need for solid experience.

What is with Cathay? I have seen your SOPS by proxy, and thankfully, many of them have been binned at KA. No raw data flying, no high speed descent, Cat D circling at a 1000 feet ( which you are now getting rid of ) and I get told to put extra fuel on by ACARS.

Even worse than having the job dumbed down, is the above empowers an ordinary operator to huff and puff in the LHS, within the boundaries of some pretty numbing SOPS.

Bring back the well managed high speed descent below the MSA; and a glide slope intercept from above isn't sporty if well handled. And who took away the dive from Sierra? Ask me to do a raw data ILS on a line check. And for licensing renewal, have me demonstrate a 500ft single engine circling approach in the simulator. Don't start me on Visual Approaches. Can't do one it should be bye-bye Charlie.

All of these were core competencies just a few years ago! Now that they are not, will make pilot training simple, cheaper and the abandonment of a need for good experience. Hence pay is not going up.

This is a reflection on what Boeing has always subscribed to: hence the term for their aircraft as being designed to be flown by N and A's.... (i'll leave the translation to others). :ugh:

Gnad,

You know you're just another airline pilot, right? The fact that cadets can eventually do it, while never having any actual flying experience, is the whole point: If you want to do some challenging flying that requires skill and experience to avoid hitting the ground, where talent and brainpower mean something, go do some soaring or aerobatics or join the air force (but don't fly jet transports) or fly helicopters.

If you want to work in a difficult industry where discipline, knowledge and a bit of experience and training will get a valuable and therefore high-paying job done, and where a single accident can break a company while taking 300-400 people down at the same time, stick with jet transports that come with all the fancy auto-systems for you to monitor, all the dispatch/load control/engineering/operations support, and pat yourself on the back for pulling off yet another easy manual landings at the end....unless the weather is a bit dodgy, then, as per policy, let the autoland take care of that too.

Don't worry, you're still an important (though easily replaceable) employee, but you're not that special, and if a 23-yr-old, 200-hr SO can do it, so can you. Before you argue about all that amazing "commanding" you do, pick up any book on leadership to find out just how little leading and commanding you do, unless you're one of the 10% that actually knows the difference between leadership/commanding and pretending to lead/command while simply being good at quoting manuals.

Have a nice day!

Iron Skillet

Of course a high percentage of cadets will be able to do it and that's the crux of my argument. The job has been made inefficient and is being continually dumbed down. From my observations, there are two streams of training too. We are not quite there with your suggestion that cadet pilots are anywhere near the same level of proficiency as experienced pilots.Yes, they are coming up to the mark quickly, because they don't have the same set of core skills as yesteryear.

You seem to infer I have concerns about my own professional importance. No, I don't. Frankly, the situation is nicely balanced. Sure, I don't have worry about demonstrating the skills I did 20 years ago which makes proficiency and professional standards riddled with complacency. The other side of the scale being my easy replacement and lack of wage growth due the supply and demand being met with cadets.

Your belittling descriptors of the airline pilot are a few years away yet. No circling bringing it a few years closer. Just cross off visual approaches and that will help. Raw data proficiency has long gone by accounts. Dragging your ass in seems common too- I thought you add three thousand to that FMGC profile. :O

No Bucks, no Buck Rogers......

The days of CX being a smallish Airline with highly experienced drivers that fly like Chuck Yeager has long gone. We are scraping the bottom of the barrell now days and CX is forced to dumb it down in order to compensate.

The reasons are obvious and you don't need to be a Rocket Scientist ( or Buck Rogers!! ) to see it.

As for no NDB approaches and no Circling?? Good riddance, much safer RNAV's available.

However I do think we should maintain the ability to fly raw data and visual circuits. Aren't the 'N' sim sessions designed to address such areas?

So..... a quick aside....

Anyone else noted that the subset of guys who bitch about the VNAV being rubbish, the On Approach logic being wrong, the procedures always changing and generally derisive about anything with the letters PRNAVGNASSANP (etc) in, almost always exclude the subset of hardworking junior guys (esp' Cadets) and almost completely belong inside (not wholly including) the subset of guys who wax lyrical about former glories - ALL THE TIME! You know who you are....

(Breathe mate .... Breathe, or maybe punctuate next time)

Oh and BTW, absolutely not agin' story time, got a few myself, they are fun between the right mates but irrelevant to today's job, get over it. (And maybe if you're gonna publish one, come up with something better than basically a visual circuit)

Gnadenburg

There are old pilots and bold pilots but not many old bold pilots.

This attitude was fine in your 402 doing them on a regular basis, but the fact is we don't do them any more, so the occasional one in the sim is not enough to send my family off with you to practice one for real.

Actually according to the article in Crews News, it says we are not to do circling approaches but that any manouvreing in future will be done as a visual approach. So effectively can't we basically do the same manouvre anyway but just call it a visual approach? Albeit with the 5000M viz required instead of the 4600M.

Some of you are waffling on about experience, qualifications, good ole days, but this issue came to ahead because of one of the ole timer Trainer/checker plucked up on the circling approach becoming unstable. His dysfunctional bipolar personality got the better of him no doubt. Pot to Kettle, come in please!

Circling approaches like the old NDB approaches of old ( level off at MDA and then dive? ) have little place in modern day long haul operations in big heavies. In my old nippy B737-200 days I did hundreds if not thousands of those; it was highly sporty and exhilarating. Now on the big heavy 744 crossing many time zones with big sleep deficit, it would be insanely suicidal to do those kind of stuff.

All those who boast of their superior manual flying skills are just full of hot air or just too full of themselves. When I did those circling and old style NDB approaches, I was young flying a very responsive sporty narrow body jet doing mainly domestic fields which I knew like the back of my hand. I was also always well rested with no time zone induced jet lag. Different ball game now on long haul heavy jets to airfields I fly to maybe once or twice before.

Yet Dragon does on a scheduled basis with a A320
back of the clock on a 2 man Return 11hr duty.. Safety indeed.

Just make sure these young, spotty faced First Officers can fly a raw data NDB approach

Tricky if you don't have an ADF, and most new passenger jet aircraft don't nowadays ...

Sorry, I don't frequent FH all that often but the circling approach thread title sucked me in. I think the things should be banned............

But I was just wondering, does your date still clench whenever you fly one no matter how experienced you are? Every one of the bastards I flew (at night mainly) gave me the irrits........

Whooops :oh: put the mocka on this one eh?

what will they ban next? visual approaches?


1. Manual landings.......:=

If a certain Zimbo can't do a circling approach it must be impossible because he was brilliant. He said so!:ok:

ha ha F_one if they ban manual landings before my upgrade i will essentially never land a jet in my life...

That's the reason circling approaches have been banned. The lack of experience on our flight decks.

In 15+ years at CX I have flown one circling approach. It's no longer required and won't be missed.

oooooh, the kid must REALLY mean it, he insulted me using CAPS. :hmm:

kid, you have some serious anger management issues that do not belong anywhere near a professional flight deck. I suggest you seek help.

DB

Just retire and salvage what little respect you have left....... Sad to see a lame cripple dog not shot.

Jizz-Ape,

Your personal put downs are much more effective if you do them all in CAPS as no.balls has demonstrated.

JUST RETIRE AND SALVAGE WHAT LITTLE RESPECT YOU HAVE LEFT.......SAD TO SEE A LAME CRIPPLE DOG NOT SHOT.

See? It's like you're yelling at me and REALLY mean it. Doesn't that give you a profound sense of power and a feeling of righteousness? Feel better now?

This thread is about circling approaches. In a typical FH trait, it has drifted off topic into a Primary School classroom. All our gallant leaders need to do is to read the rubbish written above and, with some justification, decide that we're not too bright and they can do and say what they like to us.
Grow up for goodness sake!:mad:

....decide that we're not too bright and they can do and say what they like to us.

Umm. They decided that a long time ago. They can do and say what they like to us. And we take it like the good little prostitutes we are.