bluehawaii
13th Nov 2012, 02:02
Ladies and Gents, does anybody know if there are operators approved to fly Cat I approaches with 1200ft RVR landing minimums in Canada?
punkalouver
13th Nov 2012, 13:35
I am not an expert in this sort of stuff but have a bit of knowledge of it. The answer is yes. But I believe it only helps on certain runways. The Ops Spec is 503.
It states about complying with the requirements of (CAR)Canadian Aviation Regulation 705.48 and (CASS)Commercial Air Service Standard 725.48
Some boring regulatory mumbo jumbo that you might want to skip.
--------------------------------boring regulatory below-----------------------------------
The first digit which is 7 is for Part VII of the regulations covering Commercial Air Services. The second digit can only be 0, 2, or 4(meaning there could be 705.48, 725.48, and 745.48). When us see the number 2 in use, it is the standard concerning regulation 705.48. These are also called CASS(Commercial Air Service Standards) and is where the various options for Operational Control System are described). If there was a 745.48 is would be guidance or advisory information for CAR 705.48 regulation.
The third digit is a 5 which is the subpart. Subparts deal with related topics to Part VII. In this case the related topic, subpart 5, is Airline Operations. Next is 48 which is the section dealing with approach bans.
When you read the regulation, there are various bracketed numbers for each different area such as precision approach, non-precision etc. These are the subsections. Then there are more bracketed digits starting with lower case letters (b) which are the paragraphs. (i), (ii), etc which are sub-paragraphs and finally bracketed upper case letters (C) which are the clauses.
705.48(4)(a)(ii)(B) is part of the stuff you might be interested in.
Part VII - Commercial Air Services - Transport Canada (http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/regserv/cars/part7-705-2146.htm#705_48)
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The stuff below is heavily edited and assumes you have no HUD or CAT II approach approval. Read the full regulation to confirm it.
Approach Bans — CAT I Precision
No person shall continue a CAT I precision approach to a runway with centreline lighting unless:
- The air operator is authorized to do so in its air operator certificate;
- The flight crew uses pilot-monitored-approach procedures;
- The aeroplane is equipped with a flight director capable of conducting a precision approach to 200 feet AGL or lower.
- The runway is equipped with serviceable high-intensity approach lighting, high-intensity runway centreline lighting and high-intensity runway edge lighting.
- A visibility report indicates that the visibility is equal to or greater than in Column II of the table which is based on Column I visibility as read off your approach chart and then converted to column II(If two RVR available use RVR A, if one RVR available use that RVR, if no RVR available use runway visibility(defined by a pilot holding short), if north of 60 degrees no ban).
For the RVR stuff, you can continue if:
- The RVR is varying between distances less than and greater than the minimum RVR
- The visibility is less than the minimum visibility but at the time the visibility report is received, the aeroplane has passed the FAF inbound or, where there is no FAF, the point where the final approach course is intercepted.
So basically, carry the table with you and when you see 1/2 on the approach chart(which is only a recommendation) and you have the Ops Spec and meet the other requirements which by the way apply only on the few Canadian runways with HIAL and centreline lighting(the few CAT II runways we have), you look in column I and then beside it in Column II,where you see RVR 1200 which indicates that you can do an RVR 1200 approach.
CASS 725.48 referred to earlier is only applicable to Stabilized Constant-Descent-Angle (SCDA) Non-Precision Approaches which is not applicable to your request about RVR 1200 approaches which are precision approaches.
A small image of a de-identified Ops Spec below:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8482/8181969870_b552dcd7f1_m.jpg