PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Dangers of Unstable approaches - Getting the message across.
Old 11th Mar 2007, 18:14
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con-pilot

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Back in my Marshal Service days a casual observer could believe that on many visual approaches in the 727 it appeared that we were in fact making an unstable approach to any given runway. Many times I would not roll wings level until one mile final or less. We did this because some of the airports we operated to had some rather unorthodox visual approach procedures, Guantanamo (Gitmo) being one.

However, no matter how unstable that approach appeared the aircraft was always stabilized no lower than 500 feet AGL, the fact that the aircraft was still in a 20 to 30 degree bank was not important.

What was important was that the aircraft was in landing configuration, ie gear down, flaps landing, checklist complete and most importantly on speed.


(It was always fun watching a C-5 land east at Guantanamo, talk about a really big airplane not rolling wings level until about a half mile final, very impressive. I really don't know if the Cubans would shoot at you or not if you overflew the boundary line, I had no intention of ever finding out.)
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