Briefing an approach plate, especially while flying

(Andrew Sarangan) wrote:
Many charts say ADF required or DME required. This is sometimes
overlooked until the last minute.

You should have noticed that in your pre-flight planning. Mistakes like
that are common in training, where you're doing approach after approach,
but on a real flight, you really should look at the aproaches into your
destination (and alternate) before you even get in the airplane. It's
really embarrassing to get where you're going only to discover you can't
land because you can't fly any of the approaches.

This may sound obvious, but make sure that you are briefing the
correct chart. Around here we have many ILS Rwy 24, and I have had
students confuse one with another.

Yup. I watched a student do that last week (Hi, Evan!). POU has a
VOR-DME 6 and a VOR-DME 24. We were near the IAF for the 24 approach
when he called up NY Approach and asked for the "vectors to the VOR-DME
approach". He had the 6 plate out, and didn't realize there was also a
24 approach.

The controller gave us vectors to final (for 24), and while my student
did pick up on the fact that the vector we got didn't seem to make
sense, he didn't figure out what was going on. I think the controller
added to the confusion by saying something like "cleared VOR-DME
approach" without mentioning *which* VOR-DME approach it was.

I think the take-home lesson is that if something doesn't make sense
while flying an approach, don't just keep going hoping it'll fall into
place later. If you get a vector that seems wrong, ask the controller
what's going on.