photofly wrote: ↑Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:57 am
pelmet wrote: ↑Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:13 am
if one relies on following the CAR's exclusively to the letter of the law...
I guess I missed the class on deciding which CARs are optional. On this topic, perhaps approach minimums should be considered advisory?
Of course, you will always win the argument of whether or not the CAR's are optional. There is even a CAR(and FAR) about reckless operation of an aircraft in which one can be guilty of reckless operation for many of the things we do on a regular basis. For example, considering an engine failure in a single engine aircraft point of view.....you chose to takeoff on the closer but much shorter runway instead of the much longer but much further away runway and therefore were reckless in case you lost your engine at a critical moment. Or you chose to fly at a lower altitude than you could have over the city and therefore couldn't have made that nice field for an emergency landing that you could if you had chosen to fly 5000 feet higher). In other words, you are always breaking the CAR's
As I said, there is a real world out there and one can have a black and white interpretation on all kinds of regulations from required visual reference to personal fatigue management to VFR requirements. I remember one particular type of operation I flew in the past where i was convinced that if one were to interpret the CAR's literally, no flight would ever have been legal.
This sort of a discussion came up in a thread I had recently where one of the strobe lights on a C172 has burned out which makes a flight illegal even in the daytime. I am quite confident that given such a situation, you Photofly, would choose the option to take your C172 back to home base, regardless of how you might respond on this forum about it and regardless of the non-optional CAR's.
The reality of the airline world(the safest mode of air transportation) is that thousands of approaches are flown to minimums each year by our carriers. Using an ILS as an example, when they get a few lights in view at minimums, one can argue that they should go around because there is initially, little depth perception at the DH due to fog, rain on windshield, or snowfall situations. But the reality is...the pilots usually continue for landing and they continue safely because they use their on-board equipment in the appropriate manner for a little bit longer until things become much clearer and depth perception is acquired. Something that I suggest was not appropriately done in Saint Martin.
As a final note....check out this video of a King Air flight to ILS minimums. Perhaps any IFR airline pilot can answer if they would go around based on the picture seen at 3:31 which is when minimums are announced. I would continue and so would most others but is it legal? I don't see depth perception here, therefore it is not legal. But this is the real world and few are going to do a missed approach in this situation. That being said, you would be a fool suddenly just fly visually at this point but there is nothing particularly unsafe about continuing if done properly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxUsvw6gHhc