Chart Wise: Roanoke LDA Y Runway 6

The mountains of western Virginia necessitate an offset approach.

Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 01:34 PM ET

Verified

A pilot who might be visiting Roanoke, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia, might choose to use this less-often-found type of approach when landing Runway 6 via the LDA Y RWY 6. [Image: Jeppesen]

Key Takeaways:

The LDA Y RWY 6 approach is not directly aligned with Runway 6, requiring a 14.5-degree left turn to land after intercepting the localizer path via a VOR transition and switching DME sources.
While a glide slope is available, pilots must be aware of significantly higher minimums if it's unavailable or unusable, emphasizing the importance of aircraft capability knowledge.
Pilots must be highly aware of critical terrain in the area, particularly to the north and west, which restricts circling maneuvers northwest of Runway 6/24 and necessitates high minimum safe altitudes.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Technically called a localizer-type directional aid (LDA), most of us remember and refer to these types of procedures as “localizer darn angle” approaches. Many of them aim for a single runway but are not directly aligned with it. In this case, a pilot who might be visiting the city nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia might choose to use this less-often-found type of approach when landing Runway 6 via the LDA Y RWY 6.

A) VOR, THEN TURN ONTO THE FINAL PATH