IFR Cancellation Question

Mark Hansen wrote in
:

For IFR, a visual approach requires sight of the airport / runway
environment,

... or sight of the airplane ahead of you...

For controlled airports, yes you are correct. HOWEVER..... we are
talking about cancelling IFR which is generally speaking is not done at
controlled airports.

If it's an IFR plane in front of you, you won't be cleared for the visual
to an UNcontrolled airport until that plane cancels his IFR.

An uncontrolled airport is literally shut down for IFR arrivals until
that IFR cancellation is received by the plane in front of you. Thus the
courtesy / importance to cancel as soon as you can so the person behind
you won't have to hold.

This happened to me last year, when I was in IMC returning to my airport,
and the plane before me didn't call CD to cancel his IFR after landing.
Having been in IMC for 1 1/2 hours, I was tired and ready to see land.

I was put in a hold until ATC could indeed verify the plane had landed.
Since I was doing local approaches, figured holding for 20 minutes
wouldn't be that productive so after a couple of laps in the hold, I
figured I'd try to get smart and do an ILS to a neighboring airport, get
below the cloud deck and try special VFR. No can do, since I was still
IFR, and the weather was below VFR conditions, so I just did a couple of
ILS approaches at the neighboring airport until ATC could re-open my home
airport.

Allen