@BOAC
How many ASR and PAR approaches have you posters actually ever flown?
I did at least a thousand of them, in the western world and according to the western ATC-System (mostly on military european, canadian and US airfields). Doing and instructing, in good and foul weather. We had no ILS on board, a PAR was the only precision approach available down to minimum of 200 feet ceiling and a RVR of 800 meters. And i did approaches below minimim with the intention to land, if field in sight. It was common practice, one approach, if the fuel allowed it. I did nonprecision approaches as well, ASR, TACAN (basically like VOR/DME) and Airborne Radar approach. So i´m familiar with ASR and PAR approaches as well as western military procedures.
The PAR approach was the only approach, where the controller was giving information concerning Course
and glidepath. No ATC station in the western world would be giving glidepath information without having it. So its natural for me to question the reason and origin for this kind of glidepath information.
If i look at the CVR - Information, i (from a western military point of view) see a mixture of precision and non precision elements.
Terms only common to Precision approaches are:
Glidepath: There would be none in a NPA. It would normally be a descent to the respective stepdown altitudes. There was none talking at all about that in the cockpit.
Information to glidepath: There would be none, because a fixed glidepath didn`t exist. The correct information for a NPA from ATC would be "your altitude or height (with QFE) should be "xy feet".
Decision Height: There is none in a NPA. There is a MDA (minimum descent altitude) or MDH with QFE, which is a minimum descent height. You dont go below this MDA / MDH, therefore you have to be already leveled off at this altitude / height, whereas at the DH= decision height on a precision approach you decide to land or go around, causing to drop slightly below the mentioned altitude / height. You might set yourself a higher DH in the cockpit, but you would not talk with ATC about it and it would not be identical with the MDA / MDH, but higher.
Now i´m not at all familiar with russian procedures, neither concerning a PAR (so it might have been some sort of PAR, but definitly not one i was used to) nor with the radar assistance to expect in a non precision-approach. it might have been one, but a lot of elements do not correspond with my expierience.
So i´m not saying it was that or that, wondering however that some posters are keen to favor - lets say a pure NDB approach - and explaining the nonstandard terms and talking with russian procedures, neclecting that those non standard procedures could also apply for a sort of PAR.
It is also abservable, that a lot of posters view the circumstances from a commercial aircraft operations point of view, despite the fact that it was a russian military airport and polish military aircrew operated under polish military procedures. That it involves an aircraft flown also in the civil aviation and having transported civil passengers does not change the common procedural military thinking and acting of the people involved.
So imho it might have been a PAR, it might have been a NDB, it might even have been, that ATC thought in terms of NDB and the crew was thinking in getting a PAR.
One fact remains however, none of the above is reason enough to fly in the ground.
franzl