In my experience there are four types of aerodromes/airports.
1) Those that have circuits with a mandatory track
2) Those where the traffic circuit is restricted to one side of the runway, but without a mandatory track
3) Those with no indications where you are supposed to do a standard LH pattern
4) Airports where there are no “circuits” as such – you’ll receive instructions
The French government charts contain indications of the direction of turns on all VACs, which is really convenient. In other countries you may need to read the text pages in order to figure out what circuit to fly. I just dusted my trusty, old, pre-2000 Jeppesen Bottlang VFR manual to see how the traffic circuits were depicted only to discover that in some cases they were indicated on the chart, in other cases only as text. And I who thought Jeppesen was so superior…
“All circuits to South. Avoid overflying houses.”
Avoid noise sensitive places at all costs. Also try, if possible, to avoid other aircraft. 
Ibra wrote:
Unless you read/hear something else, left hand at 1000 AGL and lookout should do it ?
You see that is my point – the airport and at least four to the very nearest are not 1,000 feet AGL and of those one is specifically no overhead joins – hence my original point if you are going to mention the pressure, runway, wind, and visibility on the ATIS then why not mention the circuit height and direction? Is it any more or less important, although I accept less variable that the afore.
Could it be because there is no provision to do so under EASA regs.?
Fuji_Abound wrote:
on the ATIS then why not mention […]
We need to be careful with what we wish before we end up with 5 min long ATIS between the circuit direction and height, alternative height in UL, the bird activity, the close taxyway, remember to avoid the house with the large swimming pool and to wish happy birthday to the ATCO on first contact
Xtophe wrote:
We need to be careful with what we wish before we end up with 5 min long ATIS between the circuit direction and height, alternative height in UL, the bird activity, the close taxyway, remember to avoid the house with the large swimming pool and to wish happy birthday to the ATCO on first contac
Exactly. Here (in the US), some ATISs start to sound like someone is reading out ‘War and Peace’. Highly annoying if you are in a high-workload environment with almost constant interaction with ATC, as is the norm in the L.A. basin.
