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Hiding in Plain Sight

After you fly enough approaches, they all start looking pretty similar. Is that your brain working for or against you? Or both?

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • Pilots often develop cognitive biases from familiar-looking approaches, leading them to overlook subtle, critical differences in instrument procedures.
  • The Gunnison GPS-B approach exemplifies this, being a circling-only procedure with an extreme 9.2-degree descent angle, making straight-in landings unsafe despite apparent alignment.
  • Complex airspace approaches, such as Teterboro's, include mandatory "at" or "at-or-below" altitudes and speed restrictions for traffic deconfliction, which are easily missed.
  • To avoid these pitfalls, pilots should actively seek out deviations from standard procedures during briefings, treating charts like "spot the difference" puzzles to identify unique requirements.
See a mistake? Contact us.

We recently heard an eye-opening tale of an approach into Gunnison, Colorado (KGUC), in which a jet crew flew the GPS-B approach in instrument conditions with a planned landing into the wind on Runway 24, but found themselves unexpectedly struggling with the approach. At first glance the approach looked to the crew to be a fairly typical non-precision RNAV approach, but what do you think? Pause here and see if you catch any subtle warning flags before continuing. 

We know that every instrument procedure must be unique, since the specifics of the airport, traffic flow, and obstacle environment are all unique. However, in practice many of the approaches appear similar at first glance—and many times they are indeed more similar than different. 

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