Originally Posted by
Ed Set
An "interesting" situation today at my CAT1 equipped airfield.
Visibility is 7KMS but cloud now drops to OVC at 200 feet therefore Safeguarding and Low Visibility Procedures are technically required, As I understand it, one of the main reasons for introduction of CAT 1 safeguarding would seem to be runway protection from unauthorised vehicles, the good visibility would have precluded this allowing everything to be seen with no problem?
Discuss!!
Ed
Low Visibility Procedures were initiated by ECAC in 1988 in their DOC 17.The aim was to protect the ILS signal for CATII and CAT III operations. If your ILS is only CAT I , you don't need LVP.
Some airports have implemented "safeguarding measures" before to implement LVP in order to avoid a sudden and hard transition in the available runway capacity. But again the regulation does not request that kind of local procedure if only CAT 1 approaches are available.
The ICAO DOC 4444 do not recognize LVP: The mention in chapter7 is about "Low visibility operations" which are just "procedural control" when the controller does not have visual contact with the traffic outside. Then there is a list of "additional requirements" when there is a need to perform CAT I and II approaches.
There is an ICAO draft manual on LVP (It is just a manual, not a PANS) which still need to be upgraded to reflect the reality.
And finally there is a pending proposition to implement an LVP definition in ICAO DOC 7030 EUR by the ICAO Air Navigation Planning Group end of november 2007 :
Low visibility procedures (LVP). Specific procedures applied at an aerodrome for the purpose of ensuring safe operations during category II and III precision approaches and/or departure operations in RVR conditions less than a value of 550 m.
Still far away from Airport that are only CAT I equipped.