DCA River Visual 19 Question

Gonzo said:
I wish I was making this up but his happened to me one time.
My briefing:
Me: River Visual 19 speed are set Vr, V2, Vt for X lbs, plan a right turn off at foxtrot no hot spots to our gate, if we go missed I will go down the river or what tower tells us to do.
CA: Are you going to build it in the FMS?
Me: No
CA: So are you going to be using white or green needles?
Me: None it is a Visual
CA: So how are you going to know if you are doing it right?
Me: I am going to look out the window.
CA: Do you mind if I build it just to feel better?
Me: knock yourself out

He then spent the next 5 minutes building the damn thing in the FMS.

Now in his defense, he was a DFW guy that had never been to DCA outside of the sim.
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The few times Ive gone into DCA they have always been landing to the north. Ive sat up front twice though during the river visual, once on an Airbus and once on a 757. Both times the autopilot came off pretty far out and I was surprised and impressed with the lack of automation used.
 
When I last flew domestic, the idea was that it was a "visual maneuver" so you largely only used the FMS to make sure were vertically in the ballpark on your descent path.

Then we had a shift in philosophy to keeping the autopilot on.

Motor skills went to seed.

Now the new philosophy is far more hand-flying and turning off the flight director every once in a while.

I'll be glad when they make up their mind. I like the "NATOPS" philosophy. Give us a box of tools, let us decide which one we're going to pull out of the box to get the job done -- we'll let you know if we have any questions if we, uhhhhh, have any questions.
 
v1valarob said:
The few times Ive gone into DCA they have always been landing to the north. Ive sat up front twice though during the river visual, once on an Airbus and once on a 757. Both times the autopilot came off pretty far out and I was surprised and impressed with the lack of automation used.
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Yea, for me it is easier to just to turn the AP/FD off when I call the river.
BobDDuck the guys that hug the west bank of the river how do they do the circle 33 or expressway 31? Is it a fear of busting P-56?
 
We had a lot of P-56 busts, but generally from departing off of 1.
 
v1valarob said:
The few times Ive gone into DCA they have always been landing to the north. Ive sat up front twice though during the river visual, once on an Airbus and once on a 757. Both times the autopilot came off pretty far out and I was surprised and impressed with the lack of automation used.
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There is an RNP approach that gets you pretty far along before requiring any sort of hand flying, but only the newer 737s and the Airbii have that and even with it, not everybody uses it. For everybody else, it's a visual approach with some sort of VPATH guidance (sometimes) for backup.
 
Gonzo said:
BobDDuck the guys that hug the west bank of the river how do they do the circle 33 or expressway 31? Is it a fear of busting P-56?
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We now have guidance to fly the circle to 33 to about a 2 mile final. Prior to that it wasn't unusual to stay over the east riverbank and turn at about 300 feet. There are certainly still times I do that, but mostly I fly it out to the east a little bit. As far as the Expressway Visual 31 it depends if tower asks for square turns or not. I

I don't know why people hug the west shore coming down the river. I think it's just beaten into a lot of FOs heads by less confident captains that they have to stay way the hell away from the east shore. Like Derg said, most of the P56 busts I've heard about (or watched happened from the ground or while on a tour visit) occurred when departing Runway 1. I think the biggest issue is that crews that are unfamiliar with the airport don't fully understand the "depart northwest per noise abatement and p56 avoidance procedures" clearance and just truck on to their first fix (which if it's SWANN takes you right through both restricted areas).
 
BobDDuck said:
There is an RNP approach that gets you pretty far along before requiring any sort of hand flying, but only the newer 737s and the Airbii have that and even with it, not everybody uses it. For everybody else, it's a visual approach with some sort of VPATH guidance (sometimes) for backup.
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190 uses the Rnp and the charted rnav visual. Will fly it completely vertically and horizontally including turn to final.
 
Derg said:
Yeah, but do you want that? It's one of the last pure yank 'n bank visuals we have left.

If NY would ever give us international arrivals VOR 13L, I'm on that like skank on DPApilot
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It was pretty bad ass 2 weeks ago when I turned over my shoulder as we banked over the doubletree to see a Qantas 747 right up our ass. Normally you never get to actually see whose behind you.
 
Polar742 said:
Just because we don't doesn't mean we didn't.

I think some of you guys forget that.
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Oh no doubt. But it would still be fun.

My standard pax brief when departing out of 02 at Skagway usually included some variation of "Ok folks, it may look like I'm trying to kill us all when we take off but I'm still here, so enjoy the ride."
 
Derg said:
When I last flew domestic, the idea was that it was a "visual maneuver" so you largely only used the FMS to make sure were vertically in the ballpark on your descent path.

Then we had a shift in philosophy to keeping the autopilot on.

Motor skills went to seed.

Now the new philosophy is far more hand-flying and turning off the flight director every once in a while.

I'll be glad when they make up their mind. I like the "NATOPS" philosophy. Give us a box of tools, let us decide which one we're going to pull out of the box to get the job done -- we'll let you know if we have any questions if we, uhhhhh, have any questions.
Click to expand...
Yes please. I'd have to look, but I'm pretty sure that this is de facto policy where I work.
 
Gonzo said:
I wish I was making this up but his happened to me one time.
My briefing:
Me: River Visual 19 speed are set Vr, V2, Vt for X lbs, plan a right turn off at foxtrot no hot spots to our gate, if we go missed I will go down the river or what tower tells us to do.
CA: Are you going to build it in the FMS?
Me: No
CA: So are you going to be using white or green needles?
Me: None it is a Visual
CA: So how are you going to know if you are doing it right?
Me: I am going to look out the window.
CA: Do you mind if I build it just to feel better?
Me: knock yourself out

He then spent the next 5 minutes building the damn thing in the FMS.

Now in his defense, he was a DFW guy that had never been to DCA outside of the sim.
Click to expand...
The standard here and what I like to do, on the RJ fms, is load in the visual to 19 w/ a 0.5 mile final and biggy size the 148* inbound. It works really nice and gives you something to shoot for with the snowflake. Yep it corresponds to 3* glideslope ie at 10 miles 3000', 5 miles 1500' etc. but I like the snowflake. No A/P or FD though.
 
The one time I flew out of DCA on Air Wisconsin, I was really shocked to look out my left side window and see us turn right over the pentagon super low, it was so amazing since I never would have expected it. Afterwards I researched it and saw its common place. Still, that day the density altitude must have been at retarded feet MSL, everything was badly weight restricted and with just 41 pax in the RJ we used almost the entire runway and couldn't have been more than 300 feet over the pentagon. Very cool.
 
That's why I am always reluctant to take runway 15. Sure we have the numbers mostly, but it is super tight.
 
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