Intercepting the ILS

I can tell you that I have been told to intercept the ILS at altitudes
well above the glideslope intercept altitude at the FAF by ATC. I have
been cleared for the approach outside of the FAF. I followed their
instructions and flew the approach. Never have had a problem. I don't
see what the problem is, so long as you are intercepting the glideslope
from below, and so long as you are at least as high as is charted you
should be. So long as you make sure you are at the proper altitude when
you cross the FAF, I don't see the problem. Unless I see it as unsafe
or some obvious violation, I do what ATC tells me to do.

What did your CFI tell you to do? Decline ATC's instruction? If you do
that, the ATC guy is going to be confused and probably ask you what it
is you want to do. In which case you can tell him that you want to go
down to 1800' and intercept there. Ok, descend to 1800', intercept and
cleared. Not much different than what you did, now is it? In the
meantime, the freq is crowded and in all the confusion someone else is
hosed, maybe you too as ATC might have to leave you and talk to someone
else. Or maybe, in the meantime your plane has gotten out of shape
(have fun going missed). To some extent we pilots have to rely on ATC
to be telling us to do the right thing. Sure, watch out for being
cleared into a mountain, but something like this seems ok to me.....

Some pilots take the tactic not to have ATC control them, but have them
control ATC by telling ATC what they are going to do and that they
expect that as their clearance. You can try that approach, but
sometimes it backfires. Me, I have discovered I can't fly the airplane
and do ATC's job too. But then I rarely have the luxury of a copilot.

Another comment I would make is if you decline ATC's instruction at
this point, you are probably going to end up going missed (or
intercepting the glideslope from above).

Doug wrote:
I can tell you that I have been told to intercept the ILS at altitudes
well above the glideslope intercept altitude at the FAF by ATC. I have
been cleared for the approach outside of the FAF. I followed their
instructions and flew the approach. Never have had a problem. I don't
see what the problem is, so long as you are intercepting the glideslope
from below, and so long as you are at least as high as is charted you
should be. So long as you make sure you are at the proper altitude when
you cross the FAF, I don't see the problem. Unless I see it as unsafe
or some obvious violation, I do what ATC tells me to do.

The OP didn't say what ATC's instruction was, so we don't know. I don't think
ATC's instruction is relevant to the OP's question. The OP just wanted to know
whether descent to 1800 was mandatory. As far as we know, ATC didn't instruct
the OP one way or the other.

snip

"Doug" wrote in message
ups.com...

What did your CFI tell you to do? Decline ATC's instruction? If you do
that, the ATC guy is going to be confused and probably ask you what it
is you want to do. In which case you can tell him that you want to go
down to 1800' and intercept there. Ok, descend to 1800', intercept and
cleared.


That may not be possible. If the MVA is 2000 then 2000 is as low as ATC can
go.

Doug wrote:

What did your CFI tell you to do? Decline ATC's instruction?

*** Actually, he didn't tell me to do anything. He mentioned it after
I had already started down the glideslope. At that point, I was pretty
busy, so I just said "Let's talk about it on the ground".

Then on the ground, it slipped through the slats.

- Jerry Kaidor (
)