Setting aside the lack of preparedness and casual approach of this crew, I suspect many jet pilots are not familiar with “VFR hacking”.
It is done in the US CPL (which I did) but they probably forgot it long before, and the training was done in pistons.
There is a good reason why many (most?) airlines in Europe totally ban circling approaches. Obviously this is done for safety, and like it or not it is a tacit admission that there is an increased chance of crashing the Airbus or whatever during hand flying in the vicinity of an airport. Doing only straight-in stacks the cards in your favour.
There is a good reason why many (most?) airlines in Europe totally ban circling approaches.
Not sure this is correct, perhaps you mean Captain only SOP?
Lo-cost use a fair number of destinations where circling may be required. Ryanair used to on occasion throw a circle to land into the jet assessment sim ride.
@Dimme got it.
When you say „circling approach“ I’d guess most pilots would think of an ILS 35 and landing on 17. That’s not what I meant.So the learning point here was a circling approach doesn’t necessarily have to be a traffic pattern to the same runway’s opposite direction. I’m not going to look up pans ops or terps now but I think in europe it (approach to one runway with break off to eg a semi parallel runway, that is) could be called „xyz approach with prescribed visual track“ while in the us „circling app“ includes flying to another runway – and is more common, perhaps?
Anyway from where they were after breaking off yanking and banking towards the runway was just the final straw.
The standard FlightSafety circle is KMEM Loc 27 circle 18R.
I have had to fly at minimums KDPA ILS10 circle 20L.
In real weather circling is terrible. But clear VMC like the TEB accident is just visual manoeuvring,
OK, this may be US terminology, but here ‘circling’ means ‘position for xyz runway’. This can have many flavors which may be unfamiliar / confusing to a European pilot. However, this was a US crew who must have known what it meant.
This can have many flavors which may be unfamiliar / confusing to a European pilot.
Not really. Any European IFR pilot knows the circlings can potentially be to any runway.
Yes, we don‘t do many circlings like the above here in Europe, because most typical GA airports don‘t have multiple runways to begin with. In the UK, many airports that had this have A some point in time closed all but one runway.
While circling to the reciprocal runway potentially gives more time for the maneuver than the above case, it also offers higher chances of messing up, particularly in bad weather.
I can only second what @Dimme said.
Circling the way I was taught was also always to the opposite side of the runway.
Later on did some sidestep approaches (EDDF) and approaches with visual maneuvers/prescribed flight tracks (LOWI) but the first thing the word „circling“ mentally triggered in my head was a break off and then 180 to the opposite direction.
So good lesson and thanks to ASI for the video.
Dimme wrote:
Nothing I was taught. This was new for me.
I agree. If I didn’t know about the Teterboro procedure beforehand, I would have been just as confused. The idea that you can legally circle outside the circling area is completely new to me. It might very well be a US thing.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Yea and how can you be qualified SIC on an airplane with pnf only? I don’t think that makes any sense at all. After all, there are two pilots supposed to fly this airplane, not a pilot and something difficult to define what his role was. SIC only implies to me that he is a fully qualified first officer, it is totally new to me that someone can sit in the RH seat without being allowed to actually fly the airplane. What in case of an incapacitation of the PIC?
AFAIU from a legal point of view, the SIC was allowed to fly the airplane. I.e. he had the necessary ratings etc. The decision to not let him be PF was made by the operator.
On parallel rwy approches they sometimes use the wording “sidestep to…”. I wonder if that would have been more visually descriptive in this scenario, even though they’re not parallel?
Many SOP’s prohibit circling approaches. I doubt any of the the airlines allow it. It’s just a sketchy maneuver at minimums. During sim training, it’s always the maneuver where you tend to screw up the most.
