Tom Turner’s article in the October issue, “When To Go Visual,” touched on one of my pet peeves about canceling IFR after breaking out on an approach to a nontowered airport: the need to maintain VFR to the runway in an IMC environment. While we all need to be courteous and try to expedite other traffic, canceling IFR at, say, 500 agl after breaking out of a 700-foot ceiling puts us 200 feet below the clouds, too close for legal VFR in Class E airspace. And canceling two miles out on the final can provide all the evidence one needs that you’re operating in less than VMC without a clearance. Enterprising feds have brought enforcement actions in similar circumstances. And there’s always the guy who pulls his pickup truck onto the runway forcing you to go around and fly the miss.
One solution, of course, is to keep the IFR all the way to stopping on the taxiway to clean up the airplane. But there’s a happy medium: Don’t cancel IFR until conditions allow, even if there’s someone waiting behind you. That’s what the rule is all about, anyway.
