Originally Posted by
rotorspeed
..But what I really don't understand is why, 10 miles out, the crew had already descended so low as 200ft RA. It seems they had a standard SAR approach mode APP1 selected, which took them down to 200ft, but why? At least so soon?
Good question. I don't understand why you'd want to be at 200' at an IAF on the 1st of a 7 leg procedure to the destination, especially when the commencement of leg1 has a spot elevation of 282'. They had 10 miles to go at 75kts, call it 1.5nm/min with tail wind, equals about 6.5 minutes to run. If they were at 2000' (instead of 200') at the IAF then 300 ft/min from there would be a comfortable vertical profile. The PROC should have a minimum descent altitude for each segment, and to me 2000' looks like a good altitude to be at at the IAF. Was the vertical profile written on the chart?