Visual Area Protection

Visual area penetrations have become a challenging problem for the FAA, airports and pilots. First, keeping track of them can be a moving target. Then theres the conflict between the hazard of visual area obstacles and the safety benefit of using an advisory glidepath. Although weve covered various aspects of this topic in the April and July 2013 issues of IFR, recent changes could affect approaches you fly.

Editorial Staff

Wednesday, July 30, 2014 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Visual area penetrations, often unnoticed obstacles below minimums on non-precision approaches, pose a significant hazard, requiring pilots to be vigilant as advisory glidepaths may not guarantee obstacle clearance.
Penetrations of the 34:1 or 20:1 visual area slopes result in procedure penalties, including higher visibility minimums, removal of Visual Descent Points (VDPs), and night restrictions for unlit obstacles.
The FAA has introduced new policies for managing 20:1 visual area penetrations, aiming for proactive mitigation through categorized waivers (especially with VGSIs) and individual approach category evaluations, rather than immediate, surprise procedure restrictions.
To mitigate risk, the FAA has removed Vertical Descent Angles (VDAs) from some approaches, which initially caused usability issues for certain avionics systems (e.g., Garmin WAAS navigators) until subsequent software updates were released.

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Visual area penetrations have become a challenging problem for the FAA, airports and pilots. First, keeping track of them can be a moving target. Then there’s the conflict between the hazard of visual area obstacles and the safety benefit of using an advisory glidepath. Although we’ve covered various aspects of this topic in the April and July 2013 issues of IFR, recent changes could affect approaches you fly.