Descending below MDA is only permitted once you have established the required references (=the RWY) at MDA!
I think every IFR pilot knows the above is generally true – being visual with the “runway environment” is what the “decision height” is all about – but one wonders whether it is also true for IAPs which take you “nowhere near” the airport.
My view is that it must be true, if not legally then practically, for the reasons I posted above – otherwise you can find yourself trapped in the canyon and with nowhere to go, should it not be possible to land at the airport for whatever reason. I am assuming everybody can “find” the airport, with GPS 
I wonder if @ncyankee can input the US position. The US is decades ahead of Europe in working out how this stuff is supposed to work.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Reading such discussions I really wonder if the airspace G limits are not too low for airplanes. For helicopters 1500m is enough mostly. For airplanes often it is not.The limits for E and other CAS with 5km and 1500ft are much more reasonable. Maybe it would be best to apply them to class g airspace as well and at the same time do away with svfr for airplanes.
You really need to consider that operational environments are different. Operating in that bad weather in a mountainous area is not very wise but doing it in a flat area is often completely doable and safe. I fly mostly in flat terrain and I am very happy with the current rules, even though I almost never fly in “minima weather”.
Peter wrote:
otherwise you can find yourself trapped in the canyon and with nowhere to goExactly.
I wonder about another aspect of this LOWZ IAP.
Let’s say you get just-visual at the MDH and proceed to the airport, and then something blows up and the runway is closed. Or you mixed up UTC and local time, etc, arrived too late and they closed the airport and tell you to get lost.
What are your options?
Apart from orbiting, until you run out of fuel and then doing a forced landing, you have the three escape routes which I listed further back. Are they viable with the cloudbase at the MDH? Who around here knows the canyons?
Or you mixed up UTC and local time, etc, arrived too late and they closed the airport and tell you to get lost.
I guess you would learn that before reaching MAPt
Let’s say you get just-visual at the MDH and proceed to the airport, and then something blows up and the runway is closed.
There’s possible scenario for this – preceding traffic blocks the runway because some accident. If it’s small one you can hope to orbit visually until cleared but if it’s something that requires time, I guess it’s your bad day.
Sorry, but I strongly disagree: In LOWZ, you are VFR once you have descended below the MDA – but you cannot do that unless you have met the criteria to continue the approach (i.e. having the RWY in sight) when at MDA.
Again, this is not what the procedure says. You stop flying under IFR the latest when arriving at the MAPt. It doesn’t say “when descending below MDA”. Since you started flying VFR from at least the MAPt (or you went missed under IFR) you can do whatever you want; horizontally AND vertically.
If you can find the runway threshold but can’t land, then you do as you will do for any takeoff?
If you can’t find the runway threshold, I can’t think of anything than flying back to the MAPt and fly the missed segment?
Here local copy are the VFR procedures for LOWZ.
airways wrote:
It doesn’t say “when descending below MDA”Yes, it does – verbatim. At least on the chart from the Austrian AIP, which I have in front of me.
Indeed the AIP-procedure says it. Jeppesen took some artistic liberty on that one !
