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Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

February 21, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Pilot Workshops

A contact approach is probably the most versatile—and most underutilized—IFR tool. Like a visual approach, you’ll navigate to the airport visually and must remain clear of clouds with no minimum cloud distance. Unlike a visual approach, it only requires 1 SM visibility reported at the airport and you don’t need the airport in sight.

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

February 19, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Jason Blair

Instrument flying certification and skills can be something that a pilot can use even on good VFR weather flying days. The process, and the skill set that comes with being an instrument pilot, and even a proficient one, can be a set of tools that makes any flight safer and more predictable.

Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

February 21, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Pilot Workshops

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

February 19, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Jason Blair

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Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

February 21, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Pilot Workshops

Editor’s Note: The following scenario is from the IFR Procedures Manual from Pilot Workshops.

Understand what’s required.
Pick your battles.
Plan for a missed approach.
Request the approach.
Navigate to the airport.

Understand What’s Required

You can’t fly a contact approach to Martin Field (S95) because it lacks any published approaches. What about flying a contact approach to Walla Walla (KALW) but breaking off to land at S95 when you have it in sight? Not unless you cancel IFR first. The AIM specifically states this practice is an inappropriate use of a contact approach.

There’s one additional requirement: The airport must have at least one functioning instrument approach. That’s best interpreted as “an approach you could legally fly.” So if the airport only has RNAV approaches and your GPS database is out of currency, requesting a contact approach is not allowed.

If weaving through clouds, close to the ground, with a mile of visibility and no airport in sight sounds sketchy—that’s because it is. Using a contact approach to scud run to an unfamiliar airport is asking for trouble. Doing so at night is a death wish. However, contact approaches can be the perfect tool with the right weather and airport configuration.

TIP – Most approaches require flight visibility above the published minimums. Contact approaches require the reported ground visibility to be at least 1 SM.

Pick Your Battles

Consider this scenario: You’re heading 100° direct to Hermiston, OR (KHRI). The airport is 6 miles ahead, but it’s obscured by a scattered to broken cloud layer. The KHRI ASOS reports 1500 feet broken with visibility of 10 miles.

You’re skimming the cloud tops at 3500 feet, which is 2900 feet AGL You ask Approach for lower, but the controller says you’re already at the MVA for the area so you can’t get lower.

You can’t request a visual approach because you don’t have the airport in sight, even though you know you’ll have it in sight once you maneuver past the scattered-to-broken cloud deck. You can’t cancel IFR, because you won’t be able to maintain VFR cloud clearance requirements. The only instrument approaches are from the southeast and would require flying to an IAF 15.5 NM past the airport only to turn around and come back.

Approval for a contact approach lets you make a legal, visual descent to land without fuss and while retaining your IFR status.

There are many other uses: Fog obscuring part of the airport but the rest is in the clear; the published approach is from the opposite direction of your arrival; you know the airport location by GPS, but you don’t see it yet; you want to generally follow a published approach course but want freedom to deviate at will to stay out of potentially icy or turbulent clouds … the list goes on.

The conditions must be good enough to stay visual, avoid obstacles, and find the airport. The flexibility you gain comes at the expense of the assured obstacle protection provided by a published approach.

Plan for a Missed Approach

It’s good practice to have terrain awareness active for any instrument approach, but it’s an especially important safeguard with contact approaches. Synthetic vision also helps with a more head-up view of hazards and airport location as you maneuver.

If you misjudge your ability to navigate visually, you’ll need a missed approach. There’s no specific procedure for that, but the most important step is climbing. You’ll also want to point toward the nearest obstacle-free area. Usually turning generally toward the airport you were trying to land at is a good start.

Stack the deck in your favor by briefing the most appropriate missed approach procedure from one of the airport’s published approaches. Those begin from the MAP, which is probably not where you’ll be when you abort the contact approach. Connect them by briefing the shortest, best path from your contact approach route to join the published missed approach procedure.

Another option is briefing the obstacle departure procedure as a missed approach plan. If the tops are low and the terrain is flat, a simple climb may be sufficient. Just ensure you have something at the ready. Or better yet, don’t make a contact approach if you’re not certain you’ll make it to the airport.

Request the Approach

Initiating a contact approach is entirely up to the pilot. Controllers are forbidden from suggesting one (just like they can’t suggest Special VFR). That’s probably because FAA legal gets hives while envisioning an endorsed scud-run operation.

Make your request to your Approach or Center controller before being cleared for a published approach by saying, “Request contact approach.” Include the runway you’d like to use when the destination is a towered airport. If the conditions and traffic permit, you’ll be given the clearance along with instructions for how to proceed if you’re unable to land successfully. Those instructions don’t imply obstacle clearance, so be sure that they conform with your missed approach plan and negotiate if necessary.

Because contact approaches are underutilized, there may be a delay while the controller asks the supervisor what a contact approach is. Be patient.

Navigate to the Airport

You may begin your descent once you’re cleared, unless ATC instructed otherwise.

The contact approach lacks any assurance of obstacle clearance. You must have an awareness of terrain and obstacles on your proposed path to the airport. A tall TV tower along your chosen visual path could really spoil your day. Use whatever tools you have in the cockpit to supplement your visual avoidance of obstacles and terrain.

You can also incorporate instrument guidance where possible. That could include following a portion of a published instrument approach or using the visual approach feature of your GPS.

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

February 19, 2024/in Tips and technique/by Jason Blair

For many, the thought of getting in instrument rating gives thoughts to flying an approach to minimums in hard IFR conditions after never seeing the ground since shortly after takeoff. Perhaps those thoughts include dealing with inclement weather, or even icing conditions. It harkens many to think of some of the most challenging flying pilots do in some of the most challenging conditions.

But this isn’t how it has to be. Instrument flying certification and skills can be something that a pilot can use even on good VFR weather flying days. The process, and the skill set that comes with being an instrument pilot, and even a proficient one, can be a set of tools that makes any flight safer and more predictable.

When I look back at my own flying that I have logged, I find that a relatively low percentage of the time is in actual IFR conditions. I regularly fly both personally, in some volunteer flying, and for some personal aircraft operators in conditions that we would go if the weather was IFR and safe to fly. But even with that “need to fly” sometimes, I find that a little less than 14% of my actual flying time in my now just over 30 years of flying has been in actual IFR conditions. Great amounts of the time, the conditions have been VFR.

This is not to say however that in the remainder of my flight experience I haven’t been operating under the IFR system when I fly. Those are different things, and, they are worth discussion when we consider why someone might want to become an IFR rated pilot or get back current if they have allowed those skills to lapse

Flying IFR but Maybe Not Always IN Actual IFR

Filing and flying in the IFR system doesn’t necessarily mean you are flying in the worst of weather. You can file and operate “IFR” even on good weather days.

There are lots of benefits to doing this. When flying IFR, ATC is working with you for the entire flight, from the clearance before you depart or slightly after you takeoff and pickup up a clearance in the air until you land, get close enough to your destination to cancel your IFR, or choose to cancel at some intermediate point. This means ATC is expecting you along a route.

This can be especially helpful when you are travelling to or from a busier airport. Getting sequenced into a busy Class D, C, or even B airport gets much easier when you are doing so on an IFR flight plan. Just “popping up” VFR outside their airspace boundaries and asking to come in can be more likely to get denied, or at least increase the operational challenge of mixing your desired flight into their normal operations. Being “in the system” gives ATC a heads up you are on the way and may even generate clearances back to you with adjusted routes to make your flight into or through particular airspaces and to or from destinations more efficient while at the same time avoiding potential traffic conflicts. In essence, you become a known quantity instead of a wildcard they have to manage.

Operating in the IFR system can offer lots of benefits when it comes to avoiding any TFRs, special use airspace, or when travelling to or from an international destination. You become a part of the system, not just a VFR target out there that ATC is hoping won’t get in the way of the traffic with whom they are working.

Those Marginal Days

Not every IFR flight will be “hard IFR to minimums.” In fact, most of them won’t be. For many IFR pilots, becoming IFR certificated is about allowing them to fly more safely and comfortably on those “marginal days.”

There are lots of days where there might be a couple thousand foot ceiling, and while you might be able to fly VFR below the clouds, scud running as many say, climbing through a thin layer to a higher altitude would put you on top in the clear. Having this extra altitude to go on top gives you more obstacle clearance, avoids a need to navigate visually in marginal conditions, and gets you away from the places where someone else might be doing exactly that.

Many times, IFR pilots keep higher personal minimums and basically only use their really hard IFR skills to climb through or descend through a layer to or from the enroute environment. There is nothing wrong with this at all! In fact, it is a great use of the IFR system to make your flight operations safer.

Learning More About Navigation and ATC Systems

There can be no doubt that becoming and IFR pilot or brushing up your dusty IFR skills makes you learn more about navigation and ATC systems. You learn more about how to navigate to or from locations using ground and satellite based navigation systems. You operate and coordinate more frequently with ATC personnel and other traffic. Becoming an IFR pilot introduces these systems to a pilot in much more detail than is accomplished in the private pilot training.

Knowing more about ATC systems and what navigation systems are available and how to use them simply makes a pilot more well rounded in their skills. While many of us operate mostly on GPS based navigation systems in our current system, even that has multiple different types of approaches, arrival and departure procedures, and processes we might use in our flight planning and operations.

More knowledge about these systems helps us navigate more efficiently, become more stabilized in our approaches to airports, understand better how ATC manages traffic flows, and keep ourselves from busting any airspaces along our travels. What can be bad about that?

Having Another Safety Layer in Your Flight Operations

I alluded to this earlier, but having ATC “watch your back” while you are operating under IFR clearances can also help coordinate your flight with other traffic. When in controlled airspace, IFR operations get ATC services for traffic separation. While we all do the best we can to look outside, and many of us have great traffic awareness systems in our aircraft, this doesn’t mean you will catch everything. Having ATC watching your flight path will give one more set of eyes to help alert you to any possible traffic conflicts.

There is additional safety added in the event that you encounter any in-flight abnormalities or emergencies. ATC knows where you are at all times, and if you need to divert, or in a worst case scenario, put the plane down somewhere in an emergency, you will already be in communication with ATC who could quickly rally some resources your way if needed.

The extra safety layer that ATC coordination when flying IFR is well worth having the skills and proficiency that allows you to take advantage of this service.

A friend used to say, becoming a private pilot teaches you to fly. Getting an instrument rating makes you a pilot. I kind of agree.

I don’t mean this to degrade anyone who isn’t an IFR pilot, but there is no doubt that becoming an IFR pilot and keeping those skills strong adds some degree of well-rounding to a pilot’s skill set. Many pilots have flown years and years safely without an instrument rating. But few who have instrument skills and fly actively have said those skills were not worth having.

Even if you don’t plan to fly in IMC conditions regularly, or even at all, strong instrument rating skills can only make you a better pilot.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Mastering Contact Approaches: A Practical Guide for IFR Pilots

Round Out Your Pilot Skills with an Instrument Rating

Flying IFR but Maybe Not Always IN Actual IFR

Those Marginal Days

Learning More About Navigation and ATC Systems

Having Another Safety Layer in Your Flight Operations

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