RNAV vs PRNAV approaches

It all depends if you have the capability, or not.

If you have any reasonable GPS that has the arrival/departure procedures, you have the capability, but might not have the paperwork. Don’t ask don’t tell applies.

If you have a reasonable GPS but do not have the routes in the database, you might try that, but might have to wing it by using a hand-held thingy to deal with the risk of having to fly the route. This is unlikely, because most prnav arrivals have very wide downwind and base legs for the jets, and neither you nor ATC really want that for something small, but they might give you DCT random-interim-waypoint instead of vectors or traditional waypoints

If you don’t have a reasonable GPS (and are RNP5 compliant with a KNS80 or somesuch) you probably already have a hand-held to wing it en-route, or otherwise are likely to be known to ATC as “mr unable” and will be getting vectors all the way from departure to the destination as a matter of course… ;-)

If there are no arrivals for which you are equipped, your only option is to get vectors to the IAF. On the other and you need navigation equipment appropriate for your route. In Europe, if your flight plan was accepted with the equipment you filed, I can’t see the problem.

I would read the text for the airport carefully e.g. for LKPR you have

which is basically saying you can do what you like if you tell them, and if you don’t tell them they don’t want to know

We could debate what % of IFR aircraft including jets are not PRNAV certified, but it is a large % so these airports have to be pragmatic. The whole issue of PRNAV has been much debated (e.g. here ) and there are various ways it could be strictly enforced but nobody had actually done that. The PBN stuff you enter on the Eurocontrol flight plan is not verified against your aircraft, for example, even though in theory there could be a central database of the PRNAV LOAs etc.

Most people just fly whatever procedure they can do with their GPS.

However I have noticed that ATC rarely assign an RNAV/PRNAV procedure to a light aircraft like my TB20. The reason could be anything…

Peter wrote:

However I have noticed that ATC rarely assign an RNAV/PRNAV procedure to a light aircraft like my TB20. The reason could be anything…

At LFPN, there is always a RNAV1 and a conventional overlay of the same initial approach procedure.
As ATC, I assign the RNAV1 initial approach by default. I noticed that usually, light aircraft do a better work at following RNAV procedure rather than tracking multiple VOR radials…
I don’t think an aircraft ever insisted to fly the conventional initial approach when I was working.

Peter wrote:

However I have noticed that ATC rarely assign an RNAV/PRNAV procedure to a light aircraft like my TB20. The reason could be anything…

Inbound to LFPN I get RNAV arrivals (initial approaches) like MOLBA or ODILO 3X all the time.

To LFPT STARs are exclusively RNAV. Soon approaches will also be exclusively RNAV, but that’s another subject about decommissioning of conventional navaids in France.

Guillaume wrote:

At LFPN, there is always a RNAV1 and a conventional overlay of the same initial approach procedure.

On a dark and stormy evening in the end of January I was inbound to LFPN in a F-reg DA42 on MOLBA3X with a light twin turbine behind me. There were several jets inbound to LFPO holding at MOLBA as I could verify on the traffic advisory system (@Peter claims he never sees any other traffic on TAS, but I do all the time, and I often take a picture to prove it to him some day). As usual using English R/T especially since I do not have French LP I then got a turn, descend and intercept clearance in French which I quickly collated in English to which the ATC replied “Bravo!”

That could have been @Guillaume working arrivals at Orly…

Peter wrote:

We could debate what % of IFR aircraft including jets are not PRNAV certified, but it is a large % so these airports have to be pragmatic. The whole issue of PRNAV has been much debated (e.g. here ) and there are various ways it could be strictly enforced but nobody had actually done that.

I was told today at Schiphol that the P-RNAV rules are enforced there and plenty of aircraft that have flown in, in breach of the P-RNAV mandate, have been fined. If you say you are authorised to fly P-RNAV you risk being checked on the ground and fined and if you don’t list P-RNAV you are very likely to be ramp checked and fined.

In the US, RNAV SIDs/STARs require equipment code of R and PBN code of D2. If the aircraft does not file with these codes and selects an RNAV SID/STAR, it will be rejected. About 85% of the flightplans filed in the US use the domestic flightplan form which does not have a means of specifying PBN codes, so they are excluded from these procedures. In the US, RNAV 1 routes may be flown by part 91 operators without any specific documentation, but the avionics must be capable of RNAV 1. Most of the legacy TSO C129 navigators don’t support RNAV 1 with the exception of the GNS430/G1000 non WAAS systems. So the KLN90B, KLN94, GNC300/XL all are not authorized to file these routes.

Edit: all US domestic flightplans will switch to using the ICAO format starting in October of this year.

NCYankee wrote:

In the US, RNAV 1 routes may be flown by part 91 operators without any specific documentation,

This isn’t true outside the US where a P-RNAV LOA is required for N-reg aircraft.