National Airlines Flights From Cape Town

[George Tower]

I hope I'm not going to embarrass myself by asking what my be a silly question but I'm interested to know how NAC fly to Springbok from Cape Town.

The reason I ask is that I know that FASB is an unmanned airfield with out an NDB or VOR (as well as DME or ILS). Just taking GPS and the fact that Sprigbok has on average 300 days of sunshine a year out of the equation how would they be expected to conduct a commercial operation presumably flying IFR?

So assuming that at Springbok it was say OVC at FL100 how would they execute the approach and secondly how would they navigate to the destination under IFR?

I'm just about to study for my Radio Aids CPL exam so as you can see I don't have any experience of IFR operations but I have flown to Springbok before so it would be interesting to have my questions answered.

Many thanks

GT

[REAL ORCA]

I would route to FASB GPS position and descend to grind mora altitude which would give me 1000' clearance from 0-5000' and 2000' clearance from 5000' and above. Also remember that in RSA you should have 1500 clearance, so one must add 500' to all grid mora's where elevation is less than 5000'.

If still not visual, I will route to closest VOR/NDB Letdown pattern for a cloudbreak procedure and then VFR to FASB.

Alternatively, you can sit back and drink a beer and by the time that you are legal to fly again the Wx would have cleared

Fire away!

[Sayagain...?]

Africa does apply for " by the book pilots...'

It applies for " by the book AFRICA pilots...'

You need additional skills to survive in the Dark Continent.

Africa do NOT apply...