Multiple Approaches

Even after a couple hundred hours behind my Garmin GTN 650, there are still things I struggle to do properly. Chief among those is flying multiple approaches. Sure, we mostly have to do that in practice, but if you miss at a busy airport or the winds change after youve set up, you might find yourself needing to plug in that second approach, or third. If you were like me, youd get things hopelessly bollixed up before you just cleared the flight plan and started over.

Frank Bowlin

Friday, September 08, 2017 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The Garmin GTN 650 can only hold one active approach at a time, but allows for chaining multiple approaches consecutively at the same or different airports.
To fly a subsequent approach, load it from the "PROC" page while on the missed approach of the previous procedure, then select "direct to" its Initial Approach Fix (IAF) when ready.
Pilots should generally "load" an approach (adding its waypoints to the flight plan) and activate it later by selecting "direct to" an IAF, rather than immediately using "load and activate."

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Even after a couple hundred hours behind my Garmin GTN 650, there are still things I struggle to do properly. Chief among those is flying multiple approaches. Sure, we mostly have to do that in practice, but if you miss at a busy airport or the winds change after you’ve set up, you might find yourself needing to plug in that second approach, or third. If you were like me, you’d get things hopelessly bollixed up before you just cleared the flight plan and started over.

While this brute-force approach does work, it’s not very efficient, and it certainly isn’t confidence inspiring. So, with some help from my friends at Garmin, I figured it out. Here’s the quick course in flying approach after approach.