.....doing 6 sector Greek island days where if you flew the SOP way you'd spend half your life in the hood waiting for a procedural approach on a CAVOK day, or go wall-eyed building an FMS magenta line for your "visual"
and the solution was?
Is there not a base in CFU?
>20 years ago it was sometimes necessary to fly a visual circuit, at night, to CFU RW17 B767. You also had to stay outside Albanian airspace. Challenging? Yes, especially with the sloping terrain down to the threshold. You had to believe the PAPI and your own assessment of 3degrees and not look to closely at the ground flashing by underneath; otherwise you were 1/2 way down the runway and it wasn't too long. Same wth other Greek islands; night circuits. It did not cause a problem if you had had good training, had maintained the standards expected and concentrated with being in the right place with the correct configuration.
Are night circlings allowed anywhere? If not are you expected to divert on a perfectly acceptable night? What's this FMS building for visuals? I'd always thought that was a Mk.1 eyeball manoeuvre, by definition. i.e. you look out the window. How does an FMC help unless you look inside? An FMS profile might be useful guidance to help you arrive at the start of the visual profile, but after that.