Long before an aeroplane moves, someone has decided that every aerodrome on the plan qualifies, that the route has the services and altitudes the flight needs, and that the paperwork proves it. This lesson is that desk work, in the flight's own order: aerodromes, minima, procedures, routes, and then the plans and forms themselves. Nearly all of it comes from the operating-procedures subpart of Part-CAT, and the recurring pattern is worth spotting early: the operator establishes a method, the method goes in the operations manual, and for the safety-critical methods the competent authority approves it.
What counts as an aerodrome here
The operator shall only use aerodromes and operating sites that are adequate for the aircraft types and operations concerned. Adequate has a definition, and the exam quotes it: an aerodrome is adequate if, at the expected time of use, it is available and equipped with the necessary ancillary services: air traffic services, sufficient lighting, communications, meteorological reports, navigation aids and emergency services. Notice what is missing: weather. Weather conditions are judged by a second term built on the first: a weather-permissible aerodrome is an adequate aerodrome where, for the time of use, the weather additionally satisfies the applicable minima. The two concepts stack, and questions love to swap them.
An operating site is the humbler cousin: a place other than an aerodrome chosen by the operator for its operation. Sites may only be used by other-than-complex aeroplanes and helicopters; a jet airliner's world is aerodromes only.
Flying with the system
For the airspace around the flight, the rule is short: the operator shall ensure that air traffic services are used for all flights whenever available, appropriate to the airspace and the applicable rules of the air. And when the operator wants to change a flight's plan from the ground, in-flight operational instructions involving a change to the ATS flight plan are, when practicable, coordinated with the ATS unit before being transmitted to the aircraft. The guidance adds the sharp edge: if that coordination was not possible, the operator's instruction does not relieve the commander of obtaining the clearance before changing the flight plan. Company wishes never outrank ATC.
Operating minima: whose job
The previous course section met aerodrome operating minima as numbers on a chart; this subject asks who makes them. The operator shall establish aerodrome operating minima for each departure, destination and alternate aerodrome planned, to keep the aircraft separated from terrain and obstacles and to mitigate the risk of losing visual references in the visual segment of an instrument approach. The method must take a long list of elements into account, best held as three families:
The aircraft — its type, performance and handling characteristics; the equipment available for navigation, acquiring visual references and controlling the flight path; any AFM conditions or limitations; and the flight crew's composition, competence and experience.
The aerodrome — the dimensions and characteristics of the runways, or for helicopters the final approach and take-off areas (FATOs); the adequacy and performance of visual and non-visual aids and infrastructure; the obstacle clearance altitude or height for the instrument approach procedures; obstacles in the climb-out areas with the necessary margins; the procedures themselves; the aerodrome's characteristics and air navigation services; and any minima promulgated by the state of the aerodrome.
The operation — the operator's relevant experience, the conditions in its operations specifications including any low-visibility or operational-credit approvals, and any non-standard characteristics of the aerodrome, procedure or environment.
Two closing rules carry the exam weight: the operator specifies its method of determining minima in the operations manual, and the method, with any change to it, is approved by the competent authority. The authority approves the method, not each aerodrome's numbers.
Departures, approaches and noise
For the procedures flown, the default is the state's: the operator shall ensure that instrument departure and approach procedures established by the state of the aerodrome are used. Two escapes exist. The commander may accept an ATC clearance to deviate from a published departure or arrival route, provided obstacle clearance criteria are observed and the operating conditions are fully accounted for; even then, the final approach is flown visually or per the established instrument procedure. And the operator may use different procedures altogether if the state in which the aerodrome is located has approved them and they are in the operations manual.
Noise gets the same operator-duty treatment. Except for VFR operations of other-than-complex aeroplanes, the operator establishes departure and arrival procedures for each aeroplane type that minimise the effect of aircraft noise, under two binding conditions: safety has priority over noise abatement, and the procedures are simple and safe to operate with no significant increase in crew workload during critical phases of flight. The two standard noise abatement departure procedures, NADP 1 and NADP 2, and their speeds and heights, belong to the noise-abatement lesson later in this course.
Routes, altitudes and the RVSM ticket
A route or area of operation qualifies only when four conditions hold, plus one veto:
Facilities and services — space-based and ground facilities and services, meteorological services included, adequate for the planned operation.
Performance — the aircraft's performance is adequate to comply with minimum flight altitude requirements.
Equipment — the aircraft's equipment meets the minimum requirements for the planned operation.
Charts — appropriate maps and charts are available.
The authority's word — operations respect any restriction on routes or areas that the competent authority has specified.
One airspace deserves its own sentence, because the exam asks for it by name. In designated airspace between FL 290 and FL 410 inclusive, a reduced vertical separation minimum of 300 m (1,000 ft) applies, and an aircraft may only be operated there if the operator holds an RVSM approval from the competent authority. To earn it, the operator shows four things: the RVSM airworthiness approval has been obtained, procedures exist for monitoring and reporting height-keeping errors, a flight-crew training programme is established, and operating procedures cover the whole arc from equipment and MEL entries through flight planning, entry and in-flight procedures to incident reporting and regional peculiarities. The band and the separation value are the same numbers the Flight Planning course used; here the subject is the ticket, not the cruising levels.
Minimum flight altitudes follow the operator-method pattern. For all route segments the operator establishes minimum flight altitudes providing the required terrain clearance, and a method for the crew to determine them; the method is approved by the competent authority. Where the operator's minimum and a state's overflown minimum differ, the higher applies. The factors behind the method are the ones a navigator would guess and the exam lists: the accuracy of position determination, probable altimeter inaccuracies, terrain characteristics such as sudden elevation changes, the probability of unfavourable meteorological conditions such as severe turbulence and descending air, and possible chart inaccuracies, plus corrections for temperature and pressure, ATC requirements and foreseeable contingencies.
The paper before the push
Every intended flight gets an operational flight plan, built on aircraft performance, the other operating limitations and the expected conditions on the route and at the aerodromes. The OFP's working content runs from the flight's identity and crew through the route with its checkpoints, distances, times and tracks, the safe altitudes and minimum levels against the planned levels, the fuel calculations with their in-flight checks, the alternates including any take-off alternate and en-route aerodromes, clearances and replanning entries, to the meteorological information. Entries made in flight are made concurrently and permanently: the OFP is a legal record, not a scratchpad. Only the lightest operations escape it: local VFR flights of other-than-complex aeroplanes, and small helicopters on visual local routes.
The ATS flight plan has two special cases worth knowing. Where the rules of the air do not require one, adequate information shall still be deposited so that alerting services can be activated if the flight goes missing. And when operating from a site where submitting a plan is impossible, the commander or the operator transmits it as soon as possible after take-off.
Above all of it stands the commander's gate. The flight shall not be commenced unless the commander is satisfied that:
The aircraft is fit — airworthiness, registration, instruments and equipment, mass and CG, baggage and cargo, and operating limitations can all be complied with, and the aircraft is not operated contrary to the configuration deviation list.
The paper is aboard — the operations-manual parts needed for the flight are available, and the documents, information and forms of the carriage rules are on board.
The world is charted — current maps, charts and associated documentation cover the intended operation including any diversion that may reasonably be expected, and any navigation database required for performance-based navigation is suitable and current.
The route will work — the facilities and services required for the flight are available and adequate, the operations manual's provisions for fuel, oil, oxygen, minimum safe altitudes, aerodrome operating minima and alternate availability can be met, and any additional operational limitation can be complied with.
Choosing the aerodromes
The selection policy opens with its purpose: at the planning stage the operator ensures there is reasonable certainty that, once the flight has commenced, an aerodrome where a safe landing can be made will be available at the estimated time of use. From that follow the specific selections. A take-off alternate must be selected and put in the operational flight plan when the weather at the departure aerodrome is below the operator's established landing minima for that operation, or when returning would be impossible for other reasons; the first lesson's fog scenario is exactly this rule firing. It must lie within a distance that minimises exposure to abnormal and emergency situations, considering the actual and forecast weather, the aerodrome's infrastructure, the aircraft's navigation and landing capability with a failure and its system redundancy, and the approvals held. How far that distance may stretch, in engine-out flying time, is the long-range module's subject.
For every IFR flight, the operator selects aerodromes so that two safe-landing options are available on reaching the destination, or on reaching the point of no return when operating to an isolated aerodrome, which itself requires the authority's prior approval as a destination; past the point of no return the flight continues only if a current assessment shows a safe landing can be made at the destination. The operator also builds in safety margins for forecast weather deteriorating by the time of landing, and ensures means remain to navigate to and land at the destination or an alternate if the capability for the intended approach is lost. The one-alternate-or-two arithmetic, and when none is needed, belongs with the alternate-planning lesson.
What this lesson owns is the weather test behind every selection: the window. An aerodrome is only selected when the weather reports or forecasts indicate that, for the period from 1 hour before to 1 hour after the estimated time of arrival, conditions will be at or above the applicable limits. For the take-off alternate and the destination itself, that test is against the applicable landing minima. For a destination alternate, a fuel en-route alternate or an isolated destination, the test is against planning minima: deliberately stiffer numbers, because a forecast is being asked to guarantee an aerodrome hours ahead.