IFR Magazine

For an industry where speed is measured in hundreds of knots, changes in technology do not arrive quickly or easily to aviation.

Recently an FAA-sponsored committee recommended the FAA not require equipage for ADS-B In, saying theres no good business case. Is this great, money-saving news for you?

Heres a sobering stat: Odds are that an air traffic controller youre talking to at any given moment has less than four years of on-the-job experience. That shouldnt be a surprise if youve been following this issue for the past few years.

I remember a few years ago I watched my captain try vainly to intercept the localizer. He had a good intercept angle, but the needle just wouldnt come in. Interestingly enough, though, my HSI showed a completely different-and more reasonable-picture.

Some approaches achieve a certain celebrity status by nature of their difficulty or mind-bending design. Such is the famous (some say infamous) LOC/DME-E into Aspen, Colo. It leverages two different localizers to give you at least a remote chance of slipping down between the mountains and seeing the runway, or slipping back up between the mountains to tell the tale if you dont.

I wanted to cry. It was my Initial Operating Experience for the jet after transitioning from a turboprop and we were going into OHare. In a snowstorm. During rush hour. Wed just gotten our third approach change. I was so lost that I was little more than a voice-activated systems interface for my instructor pilot. If my brain had any spare cycles, Im sure it would have been thinking about truck-driving school.

Non-standard is one of those tricky terms that could mean anything from a trivial change to a detail critical enough to change your whole game plan-or ruin your day if ignored.

Pull out your average approach plate for your favorite ILS. What youre looking at is really two approaches that share a piece of paper: the ILS and the localizer-only. Its even stated this way in TERPs: two separate approaches.

Surprisingly, the FAA is not the place to look for a definition of established. The AIM and the Instrument Flying Handbook say nothing on the topic. Only in the Instrument Procedures Handbook (FAA-H-8261-1A) does a definition pop up, and it just says that ICAO defines established as within half-scale indication on a localizer or VOR course. Useful, but there must be more.

In the film The Kings Speech, the future King George VI stammers and fumbles trying to start a nationally broadcast speech in front of a packed Wembley Stadium. With obligatory camera shots of the red On Air light blinking in mockery, the prince gives up and walks away from the microphone.