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Height for landing

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 6:12 pm
by jrpilot
Hello,

I have flow many IFR flight plans and have been wondering when ATC tells you to descend to say 13,000 feet and then most of the time to 2,000 feet sometimes when I then get to 2,000 I am there for a while becasue when I was on a aircraft it seemed as though we are constantly descending at the end and here (with my problem) I stay at this altitude (2,000) feet fow a few miles.  

Is there something I can download for this problem or is it just a default with M$ 2002?

Re: Height for landing

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 6:40 pm
by Nexus
Well, what's your vertical speed then?
Seems to me you're not doing a good job in planning your descent?

Altough, some approaches will keep you at like 3000ft for awhile, to avoid collisions with other departing aircrafts, for example  :)

Re: Height for landing

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 6:18 am
by RollerBall
The reason you stay at 2000 ft on a fixed heading on an IFR approach is so you can get established on the localizer and glideslope of the ILS system.

The heading is at approx 30deg to the rwy heading and the alt is so you can intercept the glideslope from below about 4 or 5 miles before the outer marker.

Re: Height for landing

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 6:20 pm
by RFB
Once ATC had me descend to 2,300 on approach into Vegas. Altimeter set correctly per ATC. All was well....until my plane ended up slamming into a mountian.  >:(

Kinda hard to see mountians at night, and ATC wont say "watch out for that hill"! :D