When Rabbit Won’t Run

The inoperative table doesn’t cover every possible system failure. Plus, you also need to consider facility outages and equipment failures at your alternate.

D Higdon

Friday, October 19, 2012 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Instrument flight inherently relies on trust in systems, but the aviation infrastructure is designed with the explicit expectation that equipment and facilities will fail, often with built-in contingencies.
Pilots must proactively plan for various equipment and facility failures by understanding regulatory requirements, consulting approach plates for alternate minimums, and considering all potential impacts on available approaches and destination options.
Thorough pre-flight preparation, including asking "what-if" questions about component failures, and practicing approaches with higher minimums or in degraded conditions are crucial for maintaining pilot competency and safety.

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Trust is an intrinsic part of instrument flight. We trust ATC to keep other aircraft from running into us, we trust other pilots to know what they’re doing and we trust the instruments themselves. In the bargain, we also expect our onboard equipment—trust is too strong a word—to work and have a similar, positive outlook on electronic navigation resources: GPS, ILS, VOR, etc. But these systems, whether air- or ground-borne, can and do fail. In fact, expecting failure of various components comprising the aviation infrastructure is baked into many of its procedures.