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The majority of flight movements in our country take place at the major airports. These airports all have published SIDs (Standard Instrument Departure), which detail what altitude and headings or routings pilots are to fly. In fact, they're much like an instrument approach procedure. ATC doesn't tell the pilot to descend to a particular altitude, do a procedure turn to the left with in X miles of the ABC NDB, cross the FAF at this altitude on the glideslope, make the decision to land or go around by this particular altitude at the latest, and do these instructions if you must go around. No, they clear a pilot for the "ILS runway 29" approach, and the pilot pulls out the CAP plate for the approach procedure entitled "ILS RWY 29". Same for the SID. ATC uses the SID by name and number and the pilot refers to that SID plate for his instructions. But what if there is no SID published for the airport? What if there is a SID but it is not included in the ATC clearance?

First things first: Don't file the SID as part of your flight plan route. Unlike RNAV STARs, SIDs are ATC procedures that should only be flown if specifically assigned as part of the ATC clearance. Many pilots make this mistake, and it can lead to confusion, such as pilots flying a SID instead of turning on course.

Secondly, what do you do if you're not issued a SID as part of your clearance? The Canada Air Pilot has aerodrome diagrams for each airport in the CAP for which instrument approach procedures are designed. These aerodrome diagrams will also have a small section at the bottom that detail "Take-off Minima". These minima are related to visibility requirements that make a take-off legal at a particular airport. For example, most plates will simply show 1/2 mile. That means that the visibility must be at least 1/2 statute mile in order for a pilot to take-off legally. There may be other mitigating factors, such as high intensity edge markers, runway centerline lights and such that allow specifically authorized operators to use lower minima. But for everybody else, these minima apply.

A quick look at a few plates, especially those in mountainous regions, will show other notations. Some will have higher minima, requiring higher visibility to help ensure safe flight on take-off. Others will have Departure Procedures that differ from the standard. What's standard, you ask? Good question.

The standard Departure Procedure, or DP, will provide for obstacle and terrain clearance based on aircraft departing and meeting the following requirements:
1) Cross the departure end at least 35 feet above the runway;
2) Climb straight ahead until at least 400 feet AAE before commencing any turns; and
3) Maintain a climb gradient of at least 200 feet per nautical mile until reaching the appropriate minimum IFR altitude for enroute operation. Higher climb gradients may be published, therefore becoming a requirement for the IFR departure.

Some runways will show "Not Assessed" in the take-off minima box. This means simply that the runway environment has not been assessed and that pilots departing IFR from these runways are on their own hook for determining whether they can safely depart and meet obstacle clearance. Departures in bad IMC may not be a good idea.

Other runways will have an asterisk (*) in the Take-off Minima box. When you see this, it means there is a departure procedure detailed in the aerodrome diagram box. These will often show pilots increased climb gradients, headings to fly until reaching certain altitudes, non-standard visibility requirements, and so forth. If using a runway for which a departure procedure of this sort is specified, the pilot must comply with these restrictions prior to turning on course, or assuming any of the elements specified by the IFR clearance received. If the clearance seems to contradict the departure procedure, it would be wise for a pilot to query the clearance prior to accepting it. Sometimes the term SPECVIS, or Specified Takeoff Minimum Visibility, is shown. In these cases, visual climbs or other procedures may be permitted under certain conditions, and may be restricted to certain aircraft categories, based on aircraft speed in the same way the aircraft categories on approach plates are noted for approach minima.

It is good to note these in the preflight stages of flight planning. This way, it gives the pilot the chance to look at appropriate charts to look for possible issues. For example, at CYFC, Fredericton, NB, there is a DP for runway 15 that requires a climbing turn on take-off to remain clear of restricted airspace only a few miles south of the airport. The aerodrome chart does not show the location of this airspace, but the LO enroute chart will clearly show it's size and location, and it also notes that the area contains "continuous live firing up to FL250". Unless you're in an A-10, you really ought to avoid it for more than just regulatory reasons.

There is more to taking off than simply firewalling the throttle and pulling back. As with other aspects of flight, a little planning can go a long way to keeping you safe. All of this, by the way, can be found in the AIM, RAC 7.7.

Some time ago, I was working our Moncton sector, which borders on the east with the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A Cessna 172 was enroute from KBGR to CYYT, a common route for single-engine aircraft being ferried from the US to Europe and points east. The weather was marginal all day, and this pilot was with Moncton Center for flight following on his VFR journey. That's the set up.

After passing Charlottetown, PEI, the pilot informed me he was descending from 3,500 to 2,500 to maintain VFR. After 'rogering' his transmission, I began to search what little weather data we had out there to see what he would be likely to encounter. Here's what I found:

CYYG OVC025 3SM -SN
CYQY OVC014 2SM -SN (this station ahead and south of his position)
CYGR OVC012 1SM SN (ahead and north of him)
CYJT OVC010 2SM -SN (well ahead and north, but the only station we had between him and CYYT)
CYYT OVC022 3SN -SN

This picture strongly suggested that the weather was getting lower as you went eastward, verified, in a way, by the weather system that was just leaving the maritime provinces heading for Newfoundland.

The pilot radioed that he was descending from 2,500 to maintain VFR. Upon hearing this, I became concerned. The Cape Breton highlands, terrain as high as 1,750 feet ASL, were very close to his route of flight assuming he stayed on straight line, and there are few communities along the coast, allowing for extended periods of little chance of seeing the hills in the reduced visibility at night. I informed the pilot of the existence of the hills and their proximity to his track, but he seemed unconcerned. When I told him of the weather I was seeing, he simply said 'thank you'. We lost him on radar due to the distance from our radar antennas and his low altitude, but we could still talk with him to some degree.

Eventually, the next controller saw him on radar, and called my attention to him. I looked and my heart sank. He was at 1,400 feet in a position where I knew if he wasn't over the hills, he was damn close to them. Getting lat/long and comparing to a map, I placed him over land, and the quick comparison (and later fine tuning when we could look back at it) put him easily within 2NM of a peak at 1,748 feet. He was asked if he could see the hillside, and he said he could see nothing. He passed this area, and descended some more. At one point, showing only 600 feet on the Mode C before we lost him on radar again. Newfoundland has some decent hills as well, as it is a very rocky area along the coast. This information was passed to the pilot, who simply 'rogered' our transmissions and went on his way.

I'm guessing he made it, since we never did see any news reports of a single engine aircraft crashing into the Cabot Strait or Newfoundland. I'm guessing that he didn't file IFR and fly higher because of icing above (it was, afterall, a winter storm and icing had been reported in the CYQY area). But flying in essence in accordance with IFR at altitudes well below those acceptable to IFR flight is, well, just plain deadly. He had essentially zero visibility in marginal VMC at night with little to no surface lights in the area. He is lucky to have survived. I wonder if he knows it yet, how close he may have come to not making it to CYYT that evening...

I got a chuckle out of this so I had to share it here. A couple of days ago, we received a NOTAMC, or cancelling NOTAM, to cancel a previously issued NOTAM which I didn't see personally. The text of the previous one, presumably, included a message about a deer on or near the runway. The text of this one? "060028 NOTAMC 060027 CYCL BATHURST CZBF DEER IN FREEZER"

It's been a while since I posted. For those who have been waiting for me to post something, I apologize, but things have been, well, nuts around my neck of the woods lately. I was hoping that I would see some responses, whatever the point of view, on the previous post, so I wasn't terribly disappointed to have to leave that last one up there. Still, for those who were waiting for something new, please stick with me. New stuff will arrive in the near future. In the meantime, please enjoy the #3 site on avcan's top 100 list of aviation sites on the web. Right here! Congratulations to Aviation.ca!

Recently, I was working a B737 inbound to an airport in the maritimes. The pilot asked for a clearance to allow him to proceed directly to an IF to set up for his own navigation to a straight-in approach at a neighbouring sector.

Being an air traffic controller is a little like a triage nurse in an ER -- as you are confronted with a new task, you evaluate it and rate it for priority, then you approach each task based on how urgently it needs to be dealt with. In this case, the other tasks were much higher priority, and the request for the IF was simply pushed down to the point where it didn't get dealt with before the hand-off to the next sector.

When the pilot contacted the next controller, he immediately asked for a 360° turn to accommodate a descent, stating the "previous controller wouldn't let us down." Funny, I thought, when the controller told me this. He asked for lower, and I cleared him to 6,000. I handed him off to the next controller before he left 12,000 so he had plenty of altitude to work through before having to level off (which he never did). So why was he complaining?

I egged the next controller on to ask him about it, feeling a little miffed being blamed for something that I had no part in. When asked, the pilot said, "He didn't clear us direct FIXXX and since we were still going direct the VOR, the computer didn't have us descend in time." In this situation, the VOR was east of the airport and the aircraft and FIXXX were both west. In other words, the pilot had the FMS programmed to fly past the airport, meaning the descent profile was too high to make the approach from 10,000 feet where he was. Had he been cleared direct FIXXX, the profile would have been different, letting the pilot down lower earlier, enabling him to make the approach.

My initial response was a very sarcastic one, so it was good that I wasn't talking to him any more. My thoughts were, "When pilots flew their airplanes, this didn't happen." In fact, the ATIS at this airport advertised the runway he wanted to land in was active, and, in my opinion, he should have been anticipating coming in on that runway (especially since he wanted it), and he should have planned the descent accordingly. By putting the fix into the FMS, the aircraft would have proceeded to that fix, which would have meant he would have been taking a track which would have conflicted with other traffic, so he was right not to program it without a clearance. But to blame me for not "letting him down" in time by not clearing him to an IF is just wrong in my opinion. It seems to me like he's flying the computer, not the airplane.

So, point taken. But it's not always possible to let the computer do all the navigation. What if radar vectors were issued to the airplane? It was just timing that meant he could eventually be cleared to the IF with no other traffic around. How would you program the computer then? Simply put, I would do this again exactly the same way as this situation were I presented with it. My other duties were too high above the IF clearance to warrant taking my attention away from them.

Point taken. And while I now understand a little more about why pilots want to have a clearance to an IF while still 350NM from destination, I still don't accept any responsibility for his poor planning. Nor do I consider a clearance to an IF, especially if it's not the active runway, a priority.

A thread was started in the forums along the lines of today's title, and I had hoped to see a little more discussion on it. The gist of what was said involves the phrases "cleared direct FIXXX", versus, "cleared present position direct FIXXX" and the question was "is there any difference?"

On a related topic, the phrase "Cleared on course", as it relates to departures, for the most part, can be interesting. For example, I spoke last evening with a departure out of an airport in adjacent airspace as he climbed through mine. When the pilot checked in, he said he was "intercepting the on course". The previous controller had coordinated with me to ensure the aircraft could be cleared "on course" versus inbound traffic (to which I said yes), and both of us expected the pilot to proceed on course, as per flight plan route. The difference is where this topic comes in, and how it fits in with the previous topic of discussion.

Changing the fix names to protect the "guilty", the flight plan route was was CYZZ > FIXXA FIXXA8 CYXX". The pilot departed CYZZ, was vectored south for a short time around traffic, then "cleared on course". Both the previous controller and I expected the pilot to fly direct FIXXA, a heading of approximately 090°. Shortly after being cleared on course, the aircraft was handed off to me, and when he checked in, he stated he was "heading to intercept the on course", which by the nature of the transmission said to me that he wasn't going direct FIXXA. When I queried him, he said, "Well we were cleared on course, but we were vectored south, so we're heading back up to the line between CYZZ and FIXXA."

And who can argue? If his flight plan route were V499 FIXXA and he were "cleared on course", he would probably have done something similar and none of us would have said anything. The expectations were different from either side. Had the pilot proceeded direct to FIXXA, in this case anyway, nothing would have been said. Perhaps this is a little something about communication. From our perspective, the "on course" was "wherever you happen to be when we say 'cleared on course' direct FIXXA". From the pilot's, it was "CYZZ direct FIXXA."

The biggest question that arises out of this from my side of things is how is the heading chosen in such a case for the pilot to "intercept the on course"? Is there a standard? 30° to the track? Last evening it was about 10°, and with such a shallow convergence, it would have taken him a long, long time to actually intercept before turning on course. I can see some pilots making the argument, "My heading was a very shallow one which just happened to have me intercept on course right at FIXXA." And I doubt you'd hear a controller say anything to him. But then, all of this ambiguity is one reason I prefer a more concise phraseology than "cleared on course".

Recent posts in another section of this site about spins got me thinking about those nasty little manoeuvers. I remember my spin training well when I was getting my PPL, and still think back fondly of them. I'm not much for theme park rides or roller coasters, but I enjoyed my spin training. Here's one of my stories about them...

It was late in my training when my instructor told me it was time to do some "upper air work". We were in C-GDRL, the oldest C150 in the flight line. It was a 1967 model, and to my memory, was old enough that it didn't have shoulder straps, just lap belts. Also, the one thing that was very different, apart from the yoke that had the tops of the handles joined by a little bar, was that the seats were raised a little above the floor, more so than the others in the line. This afforded the advantage of better visibility over the nose, but it's also what led to the story.

We were at 3,500 feet, and my instructor said to do the checks and then, "show me all about a spin." Checks completed, power off, nose up, rudder right. As we descended, I was watching out the window. Something was odd. We were definitely in a spin, but something didn't look right. I verified everything I could think of, and everything was right. We were spinning. Not fast, not slowly, but at a normal rate. We were descending, but visibility was good and I knew the airplane to know how much I needed to recover and things were going well. Three turns. Four turns. Then my instructor's hand grasped the glareshield in the middle and yelled, "Recover! Recover!" Then it hit me. The difference was simple the higher seating position and how things appeared out the window because of it. It was a standard recovery.

At no point were we in any danger, the way I saw it. I was in control, and fully aware of the ground. Heck, I was looking at it spinning beneath us. Perhaps I did hold the spin too long. Either way, it was interesting, and perhaps the longest spin I had ever done. I lost track of the number of rotations, but the little C150 did just fine, thank you very much. And so did I. My instructor didn't want to spin with me again, though...

The basics of IFR Flight include the need for an IFR clearance. The IFR Clearance is essentially permission for a pilot do something, but it also constitutes a number of requirements that the pilot must adhere to while flying. For example, the complete IFR clearance includes a route (typically the flight plan route) and an altitude. So while a pilot would now be authorized to fly the route and altitude, he is also expected to stick to that route and altitude since other aircraft's clearances would be based on that expectation. The pilot is, of course, free to ask for amendments to the IFR clearance at any time (such as changing altitude or even route, such as asking for "direct to Sumspot").

The IFR clearance must be obtained prior to entering controlled airspace. There are four basic possibilities:

1) The airport is in a control zone and therefore controlled airspace is encountered as soon as the airplane is airborne;
2) The airport underlies controlled airspace;
3) The airport and the initial part of the route is outside controlled airpsace;
4) The departure aerodrome, destination and entire route of flight are outside controlled airspace.

In case one, the IFR clearance must be obtained prior to departure. This is the case at airports with control towers, but control zones also exist at some uncontrolled airports. The idea is that ATC may not issue take-off and landing clearances, but the IFR ATC unit (the Area Control Center) has the authority to direct IFR departures after take-off and restrict the flow of arrivals to at least a certain degree. The CZ also has the effect of raising the VFR weather minima allowing for a better chance of "See and be seen" in the vicinity of the aerodrome.

In case two, there may be controlled airspace above the field (a typical base of controlled airspace in such situations is 2,200 AGL such as an airway or control area extension) while the airport itself is not in controlled airspace. This means that the IFR clearance is not actually required before take-off, but it may be required shortly thereafter. It may be to the point where the aircraft may be required to fly VFR or below controlled airspace at dangerously low altitudes if the IFR clearance cannot be issued right away, and that means it may be better to get the IFR clearance before take-off. If the base of controlled airspace is high enough (say 12,500 for example), the pilot may take-off and complete the initial part of the climb before obtaining IFR clearance. It is important to note that there may be other IFR traffic operating in the area and a call to ATC may be the only way to find that out.

Case three is very similar to the latter portion of Case two's description. The pilot may take-off without the permission of ATC, fly the initial part of the route, and the only required communication is the departure message -- alerting ATC to the fact that the aircraft is airborne. This is done for alerting services as part of the flight planning process. In any case, before the aircraft enters controlled airspace, regardless of altitude, the pilot must call ATC for clearance prior to entering.

The last case, Case four, the pilot may depart, fly in IMC and shoot an approach to landing all without communicating with ATC, since no IFR clearance is required. The only communications with ATC that are required are the departure and arrival messages, and these may even be relayed through FSS or made by telephone after landing in the case of the arrival message. It is wise to make contact with ATC if possible, since they may be aware of other IFR traffic in your area (based on other similar flight plans with their departure and arrival messages also being received).

The big thing is to know what class of airspace you're in. This can be found by checking the appropriate IFR chart (LO charts are for the low level airspace structure and indicate what's below FL180, while HI charts show FL180 and above). As part of the pre-flight planning, the controlled airspace should be reviewed, even if only briefly, to ensure the pilot(s) know where changes to controlled airspace classification take place so they know what's expected of them.