denopa wrote:
es, pretty clearly, this attitude is at least partially “our” fault. Even some of the reactions to this thread could be perceived as somewhat flippant; shrugging off stabilised approaches, a method which has been proved to work, just because we’re different, is unlikely to demonstrate our willingness to engage “professionally” with agencies. A better response might be “they are a good idea, they should be taught and encouraged, with parameters like altitude/distance from threshold adapted to aircraft types”.
Im sorry but I completely disagree. “This attitude” by certain authorities is not “our fault” as you say. How do you “engage professionally” with a cartoon. Especially one that is not compatible with how we are in fact taught – check out a circuit diagram taught in any PPL textbook, it wont look like the one in the cartoon… Anyway, stabilised approaches are taught, I certainly remember being taught that a stable approach results in a good landing from my first flying lessons. But I also got taught that a long drawn out powered dragging it in approach was not a stable approach…
Regards, SD..
denopa wrote:
Yes, pretty clearly, this attitude is at least partially “our” fault. Even some of the reactions to this thread could be perceived as somewhat flippant; shrugging off stabilised approaches, a method which has been proved to work, just because we’re different, is unlikely to demonstrate our willingness to engage “professionally” with agencies.
I doubt anyone is necessarily dismissing stabilised approaches, are they?
The point is stabilised approaches are very different for a rubber bound job with almost no inertia and engines that espond immediately to command inputs. Again, you cant apply jet technology to most of GA. When I fly in my twin the concept becomes much closer to commercial ops, there is lots of inertia and other good reasons why it makes very good sense. In a typical light single a stabilised approach can be achieved with very different parameters and yet be entirely stable. You will aslo never see CAT (well almost never) fly a bad weather circuit, but the inevitably of GA is that there are times this will be the only option. The last thing you want is to establish on long final worrying about whether or not your approach is stable while disregarding the IMC conditions you are about to enter.
As I have said before you simply cannot apply the same operational criteriai to a mulit crew cockpit, in an aircraft with engines that are slow to respond to control inputs, in an enviroment that instrument approaches are the norm., with typical GA operations.
Peter wrote:
We may have a few of our colleagues to thank for thatAnd that’s before you get to reading the monthly MOR summaries, which are eye-opening but “confidential”…
The above is the UK but this happens on the fringes of GA everywhere.
It does, but it is also true in just about every walk of life. There will always those that stretch, bend and all the rest.
I make no excuses, and these matters should be dealt with by due process, but should not be used as an excsue for tarring everyone with the same brush, that leads us to a very dangerous state of affairs.
I don’t think anyone’s shrugging off stabilised approaches: just the “one size fits all” approach to them.
While the diagram earlier will work with any SEP and probably most MEPs (which is probably why they go for that), it doesn’t mean it is the only way you can do a stabilised approach. You can do a perfectly stabilised approach in an Auster Autocrat without going more than ~300m from the runway at any time; its short field approach speed is only 40 mph, and the split flaps when fully deployed are tremendously draggy. The aircraft was after all designed for the Army who wanted to land on small unimproved airstrips with ‘low observability’ approaches flown at treetop height at very low speeds. The same isn’t true, however, of a Cirrus or a Mooney. You can fly a stabilised approach in an Auster using exactly the same criteria (well, apart from the airspeed being lower) as you can in a TBM800, but that doesn’t mean that making a tight circuit in the Auster is somehow not stabilised.
In many aircraft you don’t even have to fly the plane the same way all the time for all approaches to be stabilised. When going into Ronaldsway (airline airport), for instance, I fly a much faster final, no flaps, and wheel land. At Andreas (glider club airfield), I fly very tight circuits with full flaps. Both approaches are perfectly stabilised. Both are designed to fit the environment. One size does not fit all even in the same airframe.
The ‘one size fits all’ approach is kind of symptomatic of how the JAA tended to work (imposing airline-style regulations on light GA).
Yes, pretty clearly, this attitude is at least partially “our” fault. Even some of the reactions to this thread could be perceived as somewhat flippant; shrugging off stabilised approaches, a method which has been proved to work, just because we’re different, is unlikely to demonstrate our willingness to engage “professionally” with agencies. A better response might be “they are a good idea, they should be taught and encouraged, with parameters like altitude/distance from threshold adapted to aircraft types”.
I may take this to an extreme, and I have access to a lot of data via my new panel, but I’ve defined my own parameters for stabilised departure and approaches, depending on whether it was instrument or visual, and I upload each flight to an analyser I’ve built, which gives me a score card. It’s actually sad to see how few of my approaches are actually stable, but at least it encourages me to improve.
Example of VFR approach scorecard. Too much lateral deviation and speed out of bounds : this was an unstable approach; it felt like a pretty good landing to me though :-)
We may have a few of our colleagues to thank for that 
And that’s before you get to reading the monthly MOR summaries, which are eye-opening but “confidential”…
The above is the UK but this happens on the fringes of GA everywhere. In some countries, most GA has “collapsed” and people have moved largely below the radar, to ULs. This has not (yet) happened in N Europe, but might…
denopa wrote:
But we do have a high accident rate; some types of accidents used to happen in CAT, and don’t anymore since they have adopted those standards. We can’t blame DGAC and EASA for trying to share those solutions with us. Not sure people respond much better to dry memos than to cartoons, at least those got the discussion going.
We do, in direct comparison.
However, while there are many good lessons to learned from commercial ops., equally the difference cannot be ignored. These are multi crew enviroments, with significantly greater mechanical redundancy, performance advantages and other operational factor all of which contribute to increased safety. Cost prevents GA embracing many of the advantages that commercial ops have embraced and it is therefore inevitable that some of the risks will therefore be more difficult to manage.
As to the approach to continuing education there is a raft of studies that have considered the best means of conveying this information, a seperate deabte. However, I find it desperately disappointing that whatever strategy is favoured, there is a total dichotomy between the strategy for GA and the strategy for commercial pilots. Again it is indicative that GA pilots are treated as a bunch of amateurs and a very different population of people from commercial pilots. The fact is that on the whole they are not. They are on the whole a very well educated group of people, and have devoted considerable time and effort to obtain their flying qualifications. In many ways they operate in an enviroment that is more challenging that our commercial counterparts.
I find it desperately depressing the contempt and patronising attitude that has become the norm for GA.
It’s not unfair to consider these patronising; it’s also not surprising some of us find the encouragement to adopt airline style practices inappropriate, after all we are not airlines.
But we do have a high accident rate; some types of accidents used to happen in CAT, and don’t anymore since they have adopted those standards. We can’t blame DGAC and EASA for trying to share those solutions with us. Not sure people respond much better to dry memos than to cartoons, at least those got the discussion going.
Maoraigh wrote:
With a low mass, low wing loading, aircraft, with quick response to control inputs, and an airport where low windspeed is not very common, the concept has great philosophical value.
Even for those aircraft the core idea of a stabilized approached – to be all set for landing 2 minutes before and not 20 sec. after impact to the ground – might make some sense…
