NVFR Operations during the Fire Season?
The purpose of this thread is to stimulate some discussion about the legalities, rather than the practicalities, of NVFR operations during the "Fire Season".
I don't want to turn it into a general thrash about NVFR in general and whether it's generally safe or otherwise, especially in SE aircraft, or whether you can legally do it without a visible horizon etc, etc. Let's just assume that you can generally do NVFR Ops so long as you remain in VMC which of course is the same for day and night (Except for Helicopter VMC which is not permitted at all at night)
A quick look at virtually every Area Forecast at the moment will indicate that VIS is affected by the Fires with words to the effect of "Areas of smoke below 9000ft, locally thick near fires" in the general part of the forecast to "VIS 2000 in thick smoke, 3000 in RASH and 7km in smoke haze, etc etc"
Now, leaving aside other Met issues such as the obvious, like cloud, when you consider the implications of AIP ENR 1.10, para 1,2,4 for example, which states"CHTR, AWK and PVT operations under the VFR at night must not be conducted unless the forecast indicates that the flight can be conducted in VMC at not less than 1000ft above the highest obstacles within 10nm either side of track", is this bloody smoke a limiting issue or not?
(NOTE that this area to be considered is different to that defined for consideration for LSALT purposes in GEN3.3 -17 para 4.10(b) which talks about the area within a 10nm radius of the aircraft etc)
So... can you legally go NVFR with the smoke issues on the forecast? They're not gunna go away for months and months I reckon. Lot's of folks out there still doing it anyway so are they legal or not?
Any discussion to be had?
Cheers, ORH
Last edited by oldrotorhead; 16th Sep 2012 at 06:22.