IFR Contact Approach

[Genghis the Engineer]

I'm familiar with these and how to fly them from my FAA IFR.

But I can't find any reference to their being used outside of the USA. Are they an American peculiarity, or just buried incredibly deeply in ICAO and EASA documents as nobody really wants you to use them?

G

[Check Airman]

Could be just an FAA thing. It’s not something that you’d find yourself doing every day.

[Genghis the Engineer]

It certainly isn't, but it's not hard to see the value in having that option.

G

[Qwark]

Contact approaches are used in Japan

[India Four Two]

Canada has Contact Approaches as well.

[aterpster]

Someone current flying FAA Part 121 can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe contact approaches for Part 121 operations are prohibited by Ops Specs.

[Check Airman]

I’ve never flown for a 121 operator that allowed contact approaches.

[MarkerInbound]

It’s not so much that a contact approach is “prohibited” by OpSpecs as an air carrier would have to be approved to conduct contact approaches. There is an OpSpec, C76, in the FAA list of OpSpecs that allows contact approaches. Whether any air carrier has C76 I don’t know. One of the issues could be training. You would have to find a sim in which you could perform a contact approach. Many airlines don’t do circling approaches in less than VMC conditions because they can’t train for it. I can only recall doing one contact approach in 40 years of this foolishness. Took a Twin Beech into San Antonio one morning. I don’t recall if the ILS was down or what led to doing it but I knew from multiple flights into San Antonio that a certain highway led to the airport. It was about 600 broken and 2 miles as I recall. But I just flew along the highway for a few miles and there was the airport. How you would set up the sim for that I don’t know. And even if you had the graphics for one airport how would you apply that to another totally different airport?

[aterpster]

Originally Posted by MarkerInbound

It’s not so much that a contact approach is “prohibited” by OpSpecs as an air carrier would have to be approved to conduct contact approaches. There is an OpSpec, C76, in the FAA list of OpSpecs that allows contact approaches.

Thanks. That makes sense. When I started in the airline business in 1964 our Ops Specs permitted us to do what amounted to a contact approach using local surface conditions to continue a NPA below MDA without sighting the runway or ALS. We had to be familiar with the area. If Pilot A knew that Farmer Jones barn was along the path to the runway, he could progress predicated on his knowledge of Farmer Jones barn with respect to the runway. If pilot B was not familiar with the relevance of Farmer Jones barn, he could not use it as a progressive landmark. The local surface condition could be as low as 1/2 mile visibility. Crazy rule. Never used it. The FAA finally outlawed it.

[oceancrosser]

Not really different from an NDB “cloud break” procedure with a subsequent visual approach. Used to do that in Europe, but probably not in the last 20-25 years...

[Luc Lion]

Never heard of "contact approach" in Europe.
Visual approach, of course yes. And, as in the US, it is at the request of the crew only.

[Genghis the Engineer]

But a visual approach becomes VFR and requires VMC doesn't it? With certain minima, a contact approach remains IFR.

G

[ShyTorque]

So, in EASA land, there can be no such thing.

[Sleepybhudda]

A Visual approach doesn't have to be in VMC if your IFR. Under all EASA regs (CAT,NCC,NCO,SPO) minimum visual reference is 800m for a visual approach. I would barely do a hand flown ILS in that vis let alone a visual somehow. But thats what its says. ICAO PANS-OPS does not reference Contact approaches. If Japan, Canada and the states do it I would image it came from TERPS.

[Luc Lion]

Originally Posted by Genghis the Engineer

But a visual approach becomes VFR and requires VMC doesn't it? With certain minima, a contact approach remains IFR.
G

No.
An IFR flight making a visual approach on an airport with IFR approaches remains IFR.
In case the approach is interrupted, the crew has to make a climbing turn and join the missed approach segment which is overhead the aerodrome.

See the EASA Air Operations rules hereunder, pages 574 and 575.
https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/def...ns-Oct2019.pdf

For meteorological conditions, they should be VMC or airport in sight and at least 800m RVR.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Thanks both for that correction.

G

[excrab]

Just to muddy the waters, when I first did my night rating in the UK, which was almost 40 years ago, I was told to request a “visual contact approach” as all night flying was IFR or SVFR in a control zone, so you couldn’t cancel IFR and ask for a “normal” visual approach. It was a long time ago and have no references to back it up...

[Check Airman]

Originally Posted by Luc Lion

Never heard of "contact approach" in Europe.
Visual approach, of course yes. And, as in the US, it is at the request of the crew only.

Not quite sure what you’re trying to say here, but to be clear, US ATC can assign visual approaches without a request from the crew.

[snips]

I think from reading through the thread its called "Following a prescribed track" in ICAO speak. Doc 8168 Vol2 Design of flight procedures describes the different types of visual manoeuvre circling.
Happy to be corrected, they don't let me out the tin mines much ;-)