Shlittlenellie, that was a a very reasonable and persuasive posting, and I accept much of what you write. In fact, I think you make a very fair argument. Please don't get me wrong: I am not having a go at pilots, nor am I really having a go at anyone. The question that originally arose was about airproxes, and I stated that (in my view) there would be less of them if arriving aircraft at CVT and DSA kept closer to the airport concerned, and that 10 nm finals in class G airspae was not basically a good idea.
I am sure you agree with the last aspect of that, but you have still felt it necessary to argue for the long finals approach in Class G.
Fair enough. No decent decisions are ever made without a full discussion of all the points, and you have made some good ones in respect of DSA. I did not know that because of noise abatement criteria you had to intercept the ILS at 2000 ft. But do you HAVE to do a full ILS procedure in visual conditions? Do DSA insist on this? If they do, then they are a significant part of the problem, and whilst they will have introduced the NAP for the best reasons, the Law of Unintended Consequences may have applied itself again.
So if there is a discussion about how to reduce airproxes, maybe DSA themselves should be sat round the table.
Dropping out of CA and finding onesself at 6000 ft over DSA is, I accept, a problem. It does make sense under such circumstances to carry out a tear-drop approach procedure, and it is bound to take you a long way out.
But I still maintain that, fundamentally, the closer you can keep to the airport, the less likely you are to have an airprox. You yourself stated that light aircraft could be at 3nm at 900 ft, 4 mile at 1200 ft, 5 mile at 1500 ft, but you forgot to mention that they could also be, and will more likely be, at 6 mile, 7 mile 8 mile 9 mile and 10 mile. In fact at more than 6 mile I bet most light aircraft pilots think they are far enough away from DSA to relax.
But I read too many PPruNe postings which are just snipings at other posters. I feel your argument is a decent argument with many good points. But we still have to tackle the problem, and it will be a while before DSA has CA. If we could just get the airlines concerned to discuss the problem from a non-arrogant position, it would help. (I am not suggesting that you, Shlittlenellie, are being in the least arrogant.)