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:

Aviation infrastructure and onboard equipment are prone to failure, despite pilots' inherent trust in their reliability during instrument flight.
The aviation system incorporates procedures and and regulations (e.g., fallback minimums, alternate airport rules) to anticipate and manage various equipment failures.
Failures of critical components (e.g., ILS glideslope, approach lighting, altimeter settings) can significantly increase approach minimums, alter approach availability, and complicate flight operations.
Pilots must proactively plan for equipment failures by thoroughly reviewing approach procedures and alternate minimums during preflight, and regularly practicing degraded approaches to enhance competency.

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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.