When you break through the clouds during a circling approach, you’ve already won half the battle. But the next thing you need to do is one of the most challenging maneuvers in instrument flying: landing from a circling approach.
Landing from a circling approach is difficult for several reasons. The ceilings might be low, and the visibility can be equally poor. Additionally, it’s a maneuver that most of us don’t practice very often. When you combine all three factors, you have an approach where things can quickly go wrong.
Circling Minimums: What Are You Protected From?
First, let’s look at the protected area for these approaches, as things have changed in recent years. Fortunately, things have improved. On any circling approach, you are guaranteed at least 300 feet of obstacle clearance within the protected area. And for approaches developed or revised after 2012, the protected area has been expanded.
Here’s what the protected area looks like for new or revised approaches: The protected areas for circling approaches now use a connection of arcs from the end of each runway, instead of the fixed-radius distances used before. And the protected areas now take into account the impact of wind on a circle, bank angle limits, and higher true airspeeds at high-altitude airports. Overall, they provide a higher level of safety.
So how do you know if your approach has these new expanded circling minimums? You’ll see it in the circling minimums line – it’s a black box with a “C” in the middle.
Maneuvering to Land
Now that we’ve covered the protected area, let’s look at what it actually takes to touch down. If there isn’t an approach for the runway you plan to land on, or if the approach you’re aiming for only has circling minimums, you’ll need to perform some maneuvers to get down.
Maneuvering to a Different Runway
If you’re maneuvering to a different runway, the safest way to get there is to keep your maneuvers as standard as possible. Try to fly it like a traffic pattern. In fact, if the ceilings are high enough and the visibility is good enough, it’s not a bad idea to level off at pattern altitude instead of descending all the way to circling MDA. It gives you familiar descent points and power settings, and keeps your approach to landing as normal as possible.
But if you need to descend all the way to circling MDA to get out of the clouds and spot the runway, keep in mind that you’ll be flying a pattern that could be much lower than normal pattern altitude. That means you probably don’t want to start descending until you’re on final approach, or at least until you’re confident you’re in a position where you can begin your descent to landing without hitting anything, maintaining visual reference throughout.
Maneuvering When You Can’t Safely Fly a Straight-In
Not all circling approaches are to a different runway, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can fly a straight-in approach to land. If you need a greater descent rate to land, circling-only minimums can be published for an approach.
Take Steamboat Springs, Colorado as an example: Even though the final approach course is aligned with the runway, you need to descend very rapidly to reach the pavement. In fact, from WAKOR to the runway, you need to descend on a 7.75-degree glide path to make it down. That’s more than twice the normal glide path of 3 degrees for most approaches. And when the weather is bad, you probably don’t want to be diving towards the runway threshold to land.
So what should you do in this situation? Again, try to keep it as standard as possible and fly the traffic pattern. By overflying the runway and entering a pattern, you keep your setup and descent to landing as normal as possible. And instead of rushing, you give yourself more time.
Keep in mind, however, that you need to stay within the protected area to ensure you don’t collide with anything. And, you need to maintain visual reference of the runway. That means you may need to slightly deviate from the runway to keep it in sight throughout your maneuver.
Safely Landing from a Circling Approach
Landing from a circling approach is one of the most challenging tasks in instrument flying. Keep your circling approaches as similar to a traffic pattern as possible, and don’t descend too early if you’re below traffic pattern altitude. Do both, and you’ll set yourself up for a smooth and safe landing every time.
