1 mile is the minimum, but if you had to fly to the fix,
possibly an NDB or VOR on or very near the airport and then
fly a procedure turn, you are adding 10-15 minutes to the
flight. A contact approach saves time and time is money for
a freight pilot's company. Company loose money, pilot loose
job.

On a contact approach you do not follow anybody, you are the
only airplane and you navigate to the airport directly.

A visual approach may be instigated by the controller if the
weather is good VFR. When the controller asks, "Cessna
123XB, do you have traffic in sight? or "Report the airport
insight" the next words you'll hear will probably be "Cessna
123XB cleared for the visual."

Pilots request a contact approach and a controller may
approve. ATC may issue a visual approach and pilots may
reject it.

In any case, the pilot doing a contact approach must
maintain a flight visibility of 1 sm while the controller
can't issue the clearance unless the visibility is reported
as 1 sm. At airports without official weather reporting,
the pilot can report to ATC that visibility is such and such
and he can maintain VMC and request a contact approach, the
pilot become the weather observer. The advantage is that
the IFR clearance is still in the system and the pilot has
the "out." It keeps an active flight plan, which is nice er
than canceling IFR and then nobody will look for you.



"Dan" wrote in message
ups.com...
| Since a contact approach requires the airport to have an
IFR approach,
| I fail to see the advantage of a contact approach. If
visibility is at
| 1 mile, I think I would rather just fly the approach than
pick around
| for the airport in those conditions - too risky. Where is
the
| advantage? Following other traffic visually?
|
| --Dan
|
|
| wrote:
| Newps wrote:
| So you're saying that the controllers are the weather
observers there?
| That would put it in a gray area. The book states
that weather must be
| available. If you received the clearance before the
tower closed that
| would be OK.
|
| Yes the controllers are the weather observers. Why does
that make it a
| gray area?
|
| I'm pretty sure the clearance came after the tower
closed. I've also
| noticed that the approach controllers occasionally loose
track of time
| and they don't always realize the tower has closed.
Maybe that's what
| happened. Or the controller wasn't fresh on contact
approaches, since
| I think its used relatively rarely around here. By the
way, this is a
| small satellite airport under Class B and C airspace, if
that makes a
| difference.
|