Mahan Air
Perhaps some of you guys could enlighten me without me having to go find an AIP. Back in the old days (70s early 80s) we were taught to fly an NDB approach(no DME) by crossing the FAF at the prescribed height and then setting up a rate of descent, comensurate with time and distance that would enable you to reach the MAPt a little before your time expired. The safe height calculated for an MAP took into account the height of all obstacles back as far as the FAF, so in THEORY you could make a dirty dive to the MAP height and fly at that height all the way to the MAP. Clearly that would not have been best practice so we used to set up an ROD of no more than 1000fpm to ensure you had time to level out at the MAP height before reaching the MAP. This situation pertained for some years before the perceived wisdom decreed that this level flying bit might be inherently dodgy especially with large jet aircraft with an in-built high inertia. So it was decided that one should still calculate the descent rate to get you down to the MAP in time, but on reaching the height, if nothing seen, lots of noise and away you went. I presume that is still so. My question really is about that safe height back to the FAF. Are you actually prohibited from flying level at MAP height. It would seem in theory you can, except at Birmingham otherwise why make the statement? Offers?