The Chief Council (lawyers) is the only dept that can give offical
understandings.

And they have. They say the approach must go to MDA, unless abandoned
for safety reasons.

However, in the the preamble to the reg, there was apparently an
inclination by the FAA to make the reg specify this explicitly;
however, they dropped that provision in response to pressure from the
interest groups. including AOPA. Therefore, you can conclude that
interpretation is at variance to the final intent of the regulation.