Originally Posted by
RetiredBA/BY
... low key is a minimum height, its a Decision Height as to whether to continue...
Not on a fast type like the Hawk it isn’t. If there was a stated gate height for the good weather case then it would routinely be broken in the poor weather case where a fast flat profile is flown below a simulated cloud base, washing off excess speed in level flight until intercepting the normal profile. As already stated, this makes low key extremely variable. Sure, there could be a number of different minimum speed and height gates to choose between, but what if you have excess speed for your low key height? You need to extend the ground track slightly, which introduces room for misjudgement at a later stage than low key. Protecting against that requires a single gate at a point sufficiently late in the profile that all variations are covered. I make no judgement on the contract parameters other than to say that they’ve served well for student flying, and would join others in being more concerned about a PEFATO being carried out with inexperienced pax aboard.