Michael wrote:

I wouldn't call this wisdom -- I got my rating only nine months ago -- but
for me, the important thing is not to muddle around. When you're IFR, you
want to be either on instruments (full scan) or visual (looking outside and
cross-checking instruments), but never halfway in-between.

I could not disagree more strongly. The essence of flying a good
visual segment in low visibility is exactly the opposite of this - the
blending of visual and instrument references for aircraft control. If
you fly in low vis, especially at night, you will encounter situations
where neither will be sufficient.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that it's especially important to
crosscheck your instruments when flying a visual approach -- even on a night
landing in clear VMC, I will tune in the ILS (when there is one) and glance
down every few seconds to make sure that I'm at or above the glidescope,
because the black hole effect is so dangerous. As I mentioned in my
original posting, cross-checking instruments is always a good idea.

Still, if you're not a freight dog struggling to survive at the bottom of
the aviation food chain, a medevac pilot with a dying patient, or a pilot in
an emergency with flames shooting out from under the cowling, why push down
below minima when you cannot see the runway clearly even if it is
technically legal (say, because you made out a few of the approach lights)?
Presumably, you have an alternate that you can fly to with much safer
landing conditions.

We seem to lose a lot of good, experienced IFR pilots to approaches in IMC,
both in Canada and the U.S., and I suspect that one of the reasons is
pushing too far when there's not a clear visual transition available. A few
weeks ago, I was out over Lake Ontario flying the LOC/DME B circling
approach into Toronto Island in very easy daylight IMC (1000 ft and 2 SM),
but I still couldn't help remembering the poor Baron pilot who died on the
same approach last year, simply disappearing into the lake while trying the
approach, even after the Dash-8 ahead of him had gone missed and returned to
Ottawa.

Since alternate minimums are always at least 2 miles, I don't suppose
you're ever going to encounter these conditions - until the day the
forecast goes bust.

Standard alternate minima in Canada are 400 ft and 1 SM for an airport with
two usable ILS approaches -- in fact, those were the conditions during my
IFR flight test last August.


All the best,


David