I’m new to IFR flight plans and I just had a flight where the final waypoint was 30nm from the airport. At that point I did a direct to straight visual approach. All was fine until ATC didn’t want me to begin my descent.
Only option I had was to cancel IFR but there was still heavy cloud cover.
Is this just a disconnect in the sims’s ATC or would this have been an illegal flight plan? I feel like there should have been an option to stay in IFR until I was below the clouds.
There is no flight plan transition from IFR to VFR. As a pilot, if in IMC, you should never cancel your IFR clearance until you reach your minimum legal cloud clearance, horizontal and vertical.
Once clear, you can cancel IFR and go direct. You can also request vectors to the pattern.
That’s the way I do it in P2A.
Many uncontrolled airports (without a control tower) don’t have published approach charts. In order for a pilot to drop down out of the clouds to VFR conditions, the flight plan ‘arrival airport’ should be one with published instrument approaches. The pilot would start the planned approach with ATC, just like a normal IFR flight. Once the aircraft descends to VFR conditions, the pilot can then cancel IFR, break off from the approach, and then proceed to the destination VFR airport remaining in VFR conditions under the clouds and without ATC contact. As with any VFR flight, the pilot is responsible for avoiding obstacles like mountains, other aircraft, and remaining clear of clouds. The pilot would use the VFR airport’s CTAF to broadcast intentions and location to other aircraft in the vicinity before landing. A visual approach can not be used to descend through clouds because it is visual. The pilot has to be able to see the visual landmarks or the airport.
The main thing to remember is to stay out of clouds unless using an IFR flight plan.
During pre-flight, check the VFR airport for a published approach chart. IRL now that RNAV/GPS capability is becoming very common in aircraft, many smaller airports and even some private airports are having an RNAV approach created for them. It is relatively inexpensive because no radio equipment is needed at the airport.
This one didn’t. It was just the Garmin default proc. The flight was BIRK to BIRF. Iceland is sparce on procedures. I knew I had visual once below the clouds.
The Garmin procedure worked great. I just had no way to get ATC onboard.
The new G1000 NXi created visual approaches don’t know the weather or obstacles. It can create a visual approach through a mountain or clouds. Just because he NXi can create these approaches, it doesn’t mean they are legal or safe. Fortunately MSFS allows us to fly unsafe or illegally without any penalties.
The Garmin doesn’t upload the visual approach information to ATC so as far as ATC is concerned, you are wandering around VFR without a flight plan. I have used the new visual approach to land at a tower-controlled airport. ATC gives me pattern entry directions ‘Enter left downwind runway…’ that conflict with the visual approach.
I’ve not been entirely sure how those enter left approaches should work. Are the to be flown like a typical pattern? Can you enter left and active a Direct to final or does that make it an enter straight?
Even non towered airports, I’ve seen upwind airplanes come in straight. IFR perhaps?
There are a number of posts here that you can search for describing how to fly a traffic pattern along with diagrams. Also, the MSFS tutorials include training on flying in a traffic pattern.
The autopilot should not be on while flying a traffic pattern. However, some pilots use the autopilot heading mode while flying a traffic pattern. While flying in a traffic pattern, the pilot should be looking outside the aircraft, not fiddling around with knobs and dials.
It is not unusual to see both VFR and IFR aircraft flying a straight-in approach at an uncontrolled airport. This is not advisable. It is recommended that VFR aircraft overfly their destination airport a few hundred feet above the traffic pattern, check the windsock for wind direction and speed, look for other aircraft arriving, in the traffic pattern, or departing, and get an overall view of what is going on. Then descend and enter the traffic pattern. There may be IFR flights on a published approach. On approach charts there is an approach labeled “Circling”. These minimums are high enough for a pilot to enter the traffic pattern for the active runway. Even though there is no ATC tower, the IFR aircraft is still using ATC services and must cancel IFR after landing.
