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Descent Planning: Strategies for Safe and Smooth Arrivals

Flight Training Central

Descent planning is a critical yet often overlooked aspect of managing your flight. And if not planned properly, a poorly executed descent can present challenges and unnecessary risks when transitioning to an approach or the traffic pattern. Finally, you can enable messages to alert you as to when to begin the descent.

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Unstable approaches

Professional Pilot

It is based on the pilot’s judgment of certain visual clues, and depends on the maintenance of a constant final descent airspeed and configuration. The destination is a couple thousand feet above sea level, with an RNAV approach that depicts a higher-than-normal descent gradient to a down-sloping runway. The ceiling is 800 ft overcast.

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Danger lurks in circling approaches

Air Facts

Perhaps just prior to the start of descent could be the optimum time–certainly completed no later than commencement of approach. Recall that we must remain at or above MDA until we are in a normal position to perform a normal rate of descent to landing. Will the vertical speed necessary comply with required descent criteria?

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My Near Death Experience

Air Facts

I requested a descent from 6,000’ down to 4,000’ and was denied due to traffic. I was soon cleared to descend to 4,000’ and entered IMC during the descent while I located the approach chart to brief. I began a rapid descent from 3,000’ down to the 2,000’ for the IAF. We’re now following a Saratoga. The IAF was looming closer.

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Radio calls during power off 360 at NTA

Ask a Flight Instructor

I typically arrive over the airfield/intended landing point 3,000 AGL then fly a 360 degree steep descent to a short final. I am a military T-6 (TEX2) instructor and occasionally fly simulated forced landing patterns at non-towered airfields. This maneuver is described in JO 7110.65 (PCG).

AGL 52
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Wild Alaska

Plane and Pilot

it seems to be getting gradually darker like it would at home for us in summer, but then the sunset just gets hung up somewhere at a lower angle than midday but doesn’t continue its descent. The terrain reaches well over 4,000 feet agl, so a good vertical rise is seen. In fact, my observation was that around 8 p.m.

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Riding the Mountain Waves

Plane and Pilot

FAA weather charts can help for higher altitudes but when just a few thousand feet agl, they may be less useful. Flight idle and nose down, which normally produced a 2,000-3,000-feet descent rate, resulted in a 2,000-feet-per-minute climb. We continued our descent into Great Falls, leaving “the wave” behind and above.