Having flown wide body aircraft into Pakistan for over a decade, it still amazes me that both Islamabad and Karachi do not have ILS approaches in both directions. For those of you who have not had the privilege, RW 12 Islamabad and RW 07 Karachi do not have any published approaches.. precision or non precision. The only options for landing on these runways are
1. Conduct ILS on opposite runway and circle - discussed in depth on this forum
2. Land straight in from the ILS with a tailwind close to or slightly above the max limits for the aircraft type.
3. Or in Karachi, get a radar vector to a point 5 nm on extended centerline RW 07 and cleared for a visual approach. We all know of someone who has lined up with the military field approx 2 km to the right of centerline.
It is sad that this tragic loss of life may be the catalyst to get the authorities concerned to install this relatively common and cheap (compared to a crash) approach aid.
Only recently the famous "flower" VOR approach in Peshawar was changed to a more standard tear drop pattern, this only after a few scares from operators.
