In article ,
Sam Spade wrote:

You got a tale, on a number of levels, plus I have to wonder about the
competence of that crew.

I dunno. I grilled them pretty hard and they seemed to know what they
were doing. They didn't get defensive about it or anything.

First, an IFR FME (or for that matter a panel mount) must be able to
handle both flyover (FO) and fly-by (FB) waypoints.

The crew was quite specific that this one could only do FB, except with
an upgrade that the company was unwilling to pay for. (I even asked
them why don't they just hand-fly the DP, and the answer was that they
could, but that the CDI would still direct them according to the FB
routing, so that wouldn't actually help.)

There is also a VOR/DME based ODP for Runway 8, but not for 26.

[xnip]

Seems that they were not willing to do any of the three RNAV DPs, thus
opted for the steam gauge ODP.

Yes, exactly. That is exactly what they said.

Not a good choice at this airport.

That's what I thought, and that's what they thought. But they said that
according to the regs they didn't have a choice.

And, you say they needed a 5500-1 ceiling for Runway 8. True, but only
if they couldn't do 370 per mile to 13,000. If that airplane can't do
that, it shouldn't be doing IMC charters at an airport like Rifle.

It can certainly do that with both engines, but with an engine out it's
dicey (this, again, according to the crew).

I can only speculate:

Maybe they don't really know how to do RNAV DPs?

Inconceivable.

Maybe their database was out of date?

Possible, but that's not what they said.

Maybe they misunderstood the takeoff performance
requirements for each runway?

Ditto.

Bottom line: Anyone with their act together in an RNAV aircraft would
have departed Runway 26.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

rg