When can an approach procedure be started at a point which is not a published IAF?

Ibra wrote:

I was trying to guess how KLN (or G430) work internally when you get direct MT505 by ATC (cleared for that RNP approach)

Until you get to the point (somewhere between the IM and the FAF) where the navigator switches to 0.3 NM (or angular) scale the approach works just like any route. MT505 is well before the IF so the approach should work just as well as if you have started it at LEKLA.

Peter wrote:

A typical European approach to simple things – a 198 page manual

Apparently not so simple as we’ve had a long discussion about your first clearance to MT505!

Indeed.

There is no requirement that you start an approach at a charted IAF. When you are radar vectored you never do. Getting a clearance for self-navigation to an intermediate point is no different and IME common with RNP approaches. The important thing is that you’re not intercepting the final approach course too close to the FAF/FAP.

MT505 is well before the IF so the approach should work just as well as if you have started it at LEKLA.

Let’s assume your navigator does not list MT505 as “transition/initial” choice for loading that approach (G430 does this and KLN as well)

You load RNP with direct IAF = LEKLA, then what?

• You scroll on FPL and press direct MT505
• You scroll on FPL and activate IF-FAF leg
• Do nothing fly toward MT505 using tablet and it will work

GTN for illustration only

Airborne_Again wrote:

The plate says 5000’ at MT505 and the TAA in the direction you’re coming from is 4800’ within 10 NM. Couldn’t you get down from FL70 to 5000’ in 10 NM?

In the Jepp the MSA indication for MT505 is a bit obscured in the top RH, but in the AIP it is even more obscured in the lower LH…perhaps @Peter missed it in the heat of the moment?

Ibra wrote:

You load RNP with direct IAF = LEKLA, then what?

You scroll on FPL and press direct MT505

Yes.

Peter wrote:

I don’t know what TAA stands for but

Me neither, I always thought of MSA, and I did think MSA could be used on normal RNAV procedures…

I never heard of Terminal Arrival Altitude or its use…must have missed it during my PBN training!

Peter wrote:

ATC will never be responsible, and even if they are, I will be dead

fair point…

Peter wrote:

A typical European approach to simple things – a 198 page manual

The previous version was 200 pages.

Well, it is an improvement!

Ibra wrote:

You scroll on FPL and activate IF-FAF leg

On my GTN750 doing that I may (by coincidence)or rather may not join the leg at the desired point (MT505)

It seems that this post by @ncyankee (who is an expert) deals with this.

The “segmented MSA” bits are not the same as the Jepp “MSA circle”. The latter is for emergency use only, but the former can be used operationally, it seems. IOW:

It is also a good way to get killed, with so much printed all over the plate.

I wasn’t going to mess with this, in IMC and with real terrain all around

Especially after asking whether ATC were going to give me descents on the way to MT505 and seeing the guy back out of that proposal, which was a good indication that while he prob99 did have radar, he didn’t have a radar vectoring area chart for that part and didn’t want to stick his neck out I think (as I wrote in the other thread) that he thought I was VMC and either forgot I told him I would not be, or didn’t understand what I said about being above cloud (and obviously having to descend through that cloud).

It would be good to get real ATC input but I know by now that we aren’t going to get that.