What are your minimums...

You divert, just like you would if you hit the publish minimums and couldn't see anything.

Easy to do in something like an RJ. But I have been in a situation personally that had, due to the FD being wrong by almost 20kts, had I raised the mins, I would have never made it to my alternate, and the ASKS was wrong by almost 300 ft. KOAR was reporting 1000 ft ceilings , mins were something like 620, and I used the ALSO to get below mins till I saw the runway. Nearest good alternate was now out of range. I may have been able to make it into KSNS, but that would have been tight. And the problem lies when you take a min fuel load to stay within max gross, because the people you fly for like to load a Cirrus to the gills. It could happen to any one of us.

Set personal minimums, that's good. But be prepared to shoot the approach all the way down of you have to.
 
I could be wrong, but I never understood personal minimums to mean you abort an otherwise legal approach because the weather was forecast lower than expected. I thought personal minimums were used as go/no-go decision making criteria during pre-mission planning.

I agree completely. But the way I read the majority of posts here is "If I get to my personal minimums, I'm going missed!" In my mind, that can lead to a degradation of skill set. I have seen the weather go south at more than one airport I was on my way to much much quicker than forecast. Point I am trying to male is set your "personal minimums" to whatever you want. But be prepared to ride the approach out all the way to the bottom. If you aren't willing and able, you shouldn't be there in the first place.
 
Easy to do in something like an RJ. But I have been in a situation personally that had, due to the FD being wrong by almost 20kts, had I raised the mins, I would have never made it to my alternate, and the ASKS was wrong by almost 300 ft. KOAR was reporting 1000 ft ceilings , mins were something like 620, and I used the ALSO to get below mins till I saw the runway. Nearest good alternate was now out of range. I may have been able to make it into KSNS, but that would have been tight. And the problem lies when you take a min fuel load to stay within max gross, because the people you fly for like to load a Cirrus to the gills. It could happen to any one of us.

Set personal minimums, that's good. But be prepared to shoot the approach all the way down of you have to.


SNS would have been tight... fuel wise? or?
 
I agree completely. But the way I read the majority of posts here is "If I get to my personal minimums, I'm going missed!" In my mind, that can lead to a degradation of skill set.


You know, now that I've been instructing for a bit, I've seen this type of complacency in more than just "setting high personal minimums for approaches." I also see it in pilots that never fly in more than a 5kt crosswind, are afraid to do stalls, lack even the most basic stick and rudder skills - like holding an airspeed and bank angle without an autopilot. It takes a good concept - risk management - and perverts it into an excuse for poor skills. And like you say, at some point, you are going to get stuck actually needing to do exactly what you are supposed to be able to do.

Don't get me wrong, I screw stuff up all of the time. But if you have the presence of mind to know that you are 200' above DH, you should probably be able to tell when you are at DH, and I don't see anything hazardous happening in those 200'. Most accidents I read about seem to stem from screwing up the missed anyway, not impacting terra firma on the ILS...
 
Took a girl on a date many years ago in an F33 Bonanza out of SNS. Being not-too-careful about the weather forecast when I departed, the fog had rolled in when we got back. I shot the ILS to minimums and landed uneventfully. I was a commercial pilot with over just over 1000 hours at the time, but I wasn't flying real IFR very much at that time. I'm sure I was technically current, but I was concentrating extra hard on that approach.

Years later, I'd be hand flying Chieftains with worse avionics than that Bonanza to minimums multiple times a week at ACV. Except that I was so incredibly IFR current at that job that I could have played Angry Birds with my free hand once I had the airplane configured.
 
I don't think I have ever heard the term "personal minimums" refer to anything other than making a go/no-go decision until this thread. Maybe I just projected that onto everyone else because the other definition (breaking off an actual approach early) doesn't make any sense to me.

The idea is that you set criteria in place to try to keep yourself out of tight situations, not to limit your options if you find yourself in one in spite of your planning. Color me confused.
 
I think I've been down to 3/4SM before for a departure. Interesting experience.

Total tangent, but I've heard that one of the reasons that no Cat IIIc approach (0/0 landing mins) has been is that the aircraft would then have no way to navigate to the gate.
 
SNS would have been tight... fuel wise? or?

No, it was reporting 400 on the way in, then went to 300 the last I checked it if I remember right. MRY was reporting 100 an 1/8th IIRC. I remember it was below vis requirments. My Alternate was SJC that I filed, but winds aloft were a lot higher than forcast, and when I left VNY, I had about enough weight left over that I could have brought a bottle of water and been at max gross.
 
SNS would have been tight... fuel wise? or?

No, it was reporting 400 on the way in, then went to 300 the last I checked it if I remember right. MRY was reporting 100 an 1/8th IIRC. I remember it was below vis requirments. My Alternate was SJC that I filed, but winds aloft were a lot higher than forcast, and when I left VNY, I had about enough weight left over that I could have brought a bottle of water and been at max gross.
 
Easy to do in something like an RJ.
Of course.

Those guys are CAT II.

And even if they aren't CAT II, it's a lot easier to do "Approach lights, continue!" with a second pilot to look out the windshield for you until it's time to land and all the other bells and whistles that we tend to have and GA airplanes tend not to.

I don't think I have ever heard the term "personal minimums" refer to anything other than making a go/no-go decision until this thread. Maybe I just projected that onto everyone else because the other definition (breaking off an actual approach early) doesn't make any sense to me.

The idea is that you set criteria in place to try to keep yourself out of tight situations, not to limit your options if you find yourself in one in spite of your planning. Color me confused.
Where I've worked (correct me if I'm wrong, trafficinsight) the missed approach was considered the hazard that made the company set higher approach minima than published, not the hazards of landing from 200-1/2.
 
My last line check was to catII mins. Rvr 1200. Less than that requires an alternate. If if wont work, go to the "good" alternate. Once you are shooting a cat 2, you tend to have fuel an wx for a couple "good" places.

Maybe I read it wrong but if you go high risk (absolute mins), a couple chances at presumably "good" places are pre-planned as backups.
 
My instructing minimums are circling minimums, because that's the schools minimums

There are a few things wrong with this. 1) The first time your student will be "allowed" to fly to mins is without a CFI.. 2) This is teaching students to not respect weather minimums, establish personal minimums, yes, but they should be flying to mins. 3) Put your flight school in the PacNW or Coastal Cali, they'd go out of business because they'd never be flying. 4) What's worse? Going to minimums or running out of fuel in IMC?

I really don't understand why some schools feel the need to re-write the FARs. It's not their job... They should be teaching to fly within the FARs. I remember having a talk with one student I took over from a southern Texas school. We were discussing airspace. I asked him what the weather mins at this (pointing at a Class D) airspace was and he said he didn't know but "it's okay because I would only fly when it's at least 3000 ft because that's safest and that's definitely higher than the minimum."
 
I do use it as a go/no-go before flight. The glass Cirrus I've got a ton of hours and know it inside out, mins. The 59 Geronimo w/o even a 6-pack setup, punished plus 500.
 
A Cat I ILS to mins isn't exactly rocket surgery. It'll get your blood pumping if something else is wrong, too, but let's remember that these things are engineered so that Billy Bob Bonanza Pilot is likely to arrive alive. And hundreds of dudes do them every day. Let's figure you count yourself as an "average" pilot. 49% of pilots are worse than you, by definition, and they very rarely crash trying to shoot an ILS without some fairly serious "issues" outside of the weather.

As far as pistons...at its peak, FLX had over 100 pilots. Figure on average they were doing at least a couple of approaches a week, and I can personally verify that a fair number of them were at or close to minimums. I'm not aware of any accidents at FLX that happened simply because somebody couldn't fly an ILS to mins OR had an engine failure in IMC. And a lot of these guys, by the nature of the business, were not exactly what you'd call "salty". The bottom half of the seniority list was a revolving door. The FARs are very conservative. That's a GOOD thing, but it also means that unless you bribed your IR DPE, you, too, can DO EEEEET!

Obviously, there are other factors to consider. If it's 100 and a quarter at Green Plains Regional, odds are you're going to get in. If it's right at mins at Aspen and you're flying a jet, don't bother. But for the average guy flying the average piston in a relatively un-scary area that isn't experiencing Thundersnow and Tornadoes, "personal mins" seem less like a real "safety issue" than a lack of personal confidence in one's own abilities. Which is fine...it even shows good Judgment, in a certain light. I guess I'd say, though, that if, as an instrument rated pilot, you don't feel confident enough to fly a cat 1 to mins, you should seek out training until you do. *shrug*
 
There are a few things wrong with this. 1) The first time your student will be "allowed" to fly to mins is without a CFI.. 2) This is teaching students to not respect weather minimums, establish personal minimums, yes, but they should be flying to mins. 3) Put your flight school in the PacNW or Coastal Cali, they'd go out of business because they'd never be flying. 4) What's worse? Going to minimums or running out of fuel in IMC?

I really don't understand why some schools feel the need to re-write the FARs. It's not their job... They should be teaching to fly within the FARs. I remember having a talk with one student I took over from a southern Texas school. We were discussing airspace. I asked him what the weather mins at this (pointing at a Class D) airspace was and he said he didn't know but "it's okay because I would only fly when it's at least 3000 ft because that's safest and that's definitely higher than the minimum."
Yeah, well I wish we could go lower too
 
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