Circle to land

It has to do with IFR approaches. You do it when the direction of your landing runway is different from the direction of the instrument approach. Most often it’s reciprocal, e.g. the airport has an ILS on runway 28 only, but the wind requires you to land on runway 10. Or it could be a different runway at the same airport. You first descend on instruments until you get a visual contact (not below minimums, of course), and then you continue visually to the required runway without losing the visual contact. There are two kinds of manoeuvres: “circle to land” and “circle to land with prescribed track”. In the latter case, you have a specific route to follow listed on the approach chart, which you do visually. In the former one, no track is mandated, but there are standard ways to do it. For example, for reciprocal runway, at missed approach point you turn 45° off the runway centreline and fly for 20 seconds, then turn parallel to the runway and fly till the threshold is abeam, then, if your height AGL is H, you keep flying for (H/50) seconds and then commence a 180° turn towards your landing runway. At the end of this turn, you are supposed to wind up right on the glidepath to your landing.

These are the definitions:

A circling approach is an extension of an instrument approach procedure which provides for visual circling of the aerodrome prior to landing. (ICAO Doc 8168: Procedures for Air Navigation Services – Aircraft Operations (PANS-OPS) Vol I – Flight Procedures)

A circling approach is the visual phase of an instrument approach to bring an aircraft into position for landing on a runway which is not suitably located for a straight-in approach. (JAR-OPS 1.435 (a) (1))

Ultranomad wrote:

and then you continue visually to the required runway without losing the visual contact…

You must not get below “circling minima” (which are different for every airfield) but there are quite a few airfields where you will actually lose visual contact with the runway during the maneuver if you fly it at minimum conditions. Therefore it is best flown in a procedural way with stopwatch and heading bug.

If I remember this correctly from my theory classes, you may lose sight of the runway, but you must keep the airport in sight during circling. Is that correct?

I guess it’s not about proving something but about your safety that you closely follow the CTL instructions. Many times the minimum is higher, the procedure is always (?) on one side of the field and sometimes it can be scary too, at least when you have strong tailwinds on the prescribed downwind leg and the procedure is “narrow”. Good hand flying skills are critical under these conditions … and if the weather is high enough sometimes cancelling IFR plus a straight in VFR approach feels safer …

Unless I take up a career in IFR FSX …

Actually the way my whole flying ‘career’ started and helped me a lot to receive my IR.

If I remember this correctly from my theory classes, you may lose sight of the runway, but you must keep the airport in sight during circling. Is that correct?

I can find that specific reference only for the US (http://code7700.com/circling_approach.html), can anybody help out for EU OPS? The other interesting part is a missed approach after breaking out.

Regarding the issues Flyer59 raised and some more, especially in regard to ICAO-US differences there is a paper at http://skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/1486.pdf referenced from http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Circling_Approach

Rwy20 wrote:

If I remember this correctly from my theory classes, you may lose sight of the runway, but you must keep the airport in sight during circling. Is that correct?

I have never heard of that requirement. For example at Innsbruck (LOWI) the circle to land procedure starts from 4NM out (almost 8km!) but only 3000m of visibilty are required to fly it. We train it on the simulator (I have never flown it in real life in minimum conditions) and usually one only sees the airport and runway on final.