Does anyone know what determines how far from the destination ATC gives expected approach? One time they gave me approach 100nm from the airport, another time it’s only 14nm, when I am almost on final.
100nm is a perfect distance so I have plenty of time to prepare but it only happened once. Usually it’s 15-20nm. It’s not a problem if ATC gives me clearance to the same approach that I have already configured in FMC but when they tell me to land on a opposite runway there is not much time to reconfigure everything.
It’s better to use your own flight plan EFB and begin your own descent based on the EFB’s calculated ToD. This way you have enough lead time to get to the approach IAF without scrambling.
You’ll get nagged to go back to ENR cruise until you’re within the “magic range” of the IAF - this is true if you decide to drop from cruise straight to the IAF or you take a STAR.
Once you’re within range of the IAF, ATC syncs again. That’s just the way it is.
Descend is not a problem, I am talking about lateral navigation.
I was landing at LSGG the other day and prepared my FMC to land on RW22. I was already after BIVLO when ATC told me to land on RW04. RW22 was an active runway according to ATIS but ATC cleared me to RW04 for some reason. If they told me this when I was 50nm from the airport I’d have enough time to make changes in my flight plan.
So, my question is why it gave me an expected approach 100nm from my destination when I was landing at YGLA, but it waited to the very last moment when I was landing at LSGG?
I see here very important difference - 2 really different type of procedure. First as looks like with not any arrival procedure with precise/no precise approach and other that has defined arrival and set approach type (in this case ILS) already on GPS/FMC. Then I don’t expect any other generic step as you’ve reported. Other interesting thing for first type of approach is maybe terrain around destination airport what can maybe play some role here. Look, this isn’t simple like any game to describe why yes and why not, good understanding of all things is mandatory to have better look at this problematic, other case is how sim will fight with this situation you’ve prepared in planner
aaaaah you’ve posted next post meanwhile, will not now change my post due this, I leave it as answer to your first post. On other side, Brisbane and Reykjavik are really 2 different places where approach and arrival procedure possibilities need to be checked. Look at that, why simple visual approach is set?
So at time of arrival your ATIS still says rwy22 for arrival? If yes what weather type you have set? Other case the sim problem looks like. What about wind indications for sure at time of arrival? You know, weather and conditions are changing very often and your expectations and requirements to have correct informations soon has nothing to do with reality, if we can say like that.
May or may not be useful but i always use Navi graphs or little navmap enroute to keep checking on arrival weather and runway, i also never enter arrival or approaches into fmc until I’ve been told by ATC what they want me to do ( i do sometimes enter the expected ILS frequency) that said I’ve never had approach information that late i usually get it around 50-20 miles but I’m usually pretty much setup for that runway anyway as i have been monitoring. ATIS i usually avoid as it is almost always wrong
You can of course “force” ATC to use your prepared flight plan but to me that’s cheating!
I also used to leave setting up the arrival until late on into the flight and did occasionally get a last minute change. But recently I’ve been setting up from the start using the info Simbrief provides and up to now have always got what I expected - and no, I don’t have the forced ATC on.
It does add to the fun though when you’re given something unexpected…!
I do it for every flight but when wind is slower than 10kts ATC is unpredictable with active runway. It will give you a runway with tail wind if the weather is calm.
Well i would say atc becomes unpredictable at far less than 10 knots only really when it’s down to a few knots , and a tailwind at those speeds wouldn’t matter at all. Also little nav map usually reports all runways good for landing in these conditions so you are for warned
This happens IRL sometimes (there’s an A320 pilot in my family), with the Pilot Monitoring scrambling to get the Macdoo configured in time. Not often, granted, but it does happen.
If you’re really rushed, there’s nothing to stop you from using Active Pause, as you’re head-down anyway.
