Instrument Procedures Handbook a welcome tool
It doesn't have to be that way, and the FAA is here to help. Truly. One of its latest and greatest offerings is the nicely done Instrument Procedures Handbook, FAA-H-8261-1. Because it is relatively new, leaving the Flight Procedure Standards Branch in 2004, a sizeable percentage of pilots, flight instructors, and perhaps even designated pilot examiners (DPEs) have not yet heard of it.
Although recent, it was referenced in the latest iteration
of the Instrument Rating Practical Test Standards (PTS), FAA-S-8081-4D, which took effect in October 2004. The introduction notes that the PTS is based on listed references, and includes FAA-H-8261-1 at the end of its list of handbooks. For those among us in the aviation community who grew up with older black-and-white texts whose illustrations left us with impressions of mimeographed copies of mimeographed copies of time-worn cuneiform tablets, both the illustrations and the text found occupying the Instrument Procedures Handbook are the stuff of dreams. Even the crustiest DPEs should be impressed.
Permit me to quote from the 8261-1's preface, for few if any could have done a better work of explaining what the volume is all about. "The Instrument Procedures Handbook is designed as a technical reference for professional pilots who are conducting instrument flight rule (IFR) operations in the National Airspace System (NAS). Certified instrument flight instructors, instrument pilots, and instrument students may find this handbook a valuable training aid since it provides detailed coverage of instrument charts and procedures including IFR takeoff, departure, en route, arrival, approach, and landing. Safety information covering relevant subjects such as runway incursion, land and hold short operations (LAHSO), controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), and human factors issues are also included."
Pilot examiners have long known that the FAA had begun to think in terms of a National Airspace System, although it may be that few examiners either use or hear that particular term during the ground portion of their practical testing. The very concept of America's vast airspace as a system has left some aviators cold. If an applicant's instrument training has been weak in treating each flight as a part of an overall system, the Instrument Procedures Handbook provides an excellent service in allaying some fears as well as helping to mold pilots' aeronautical worldview. Those seeking only IFR procedural information may choose to begin with Chapter 2. Still, you will impress your examiner better by having read the polished overview of the NAS and your part in it that Chapter 1 provides.
Page 1-1 begins with lists of what seem to be mere statistics regarding air traffic control facilities, available airports, procedures, and annual instrument operations, but they are presented in a way that captivates the reader's interest. These help you to adopt the broad view that your individual aircraft is a part of an overall system, which leads you to a knowledge of how that system works and how you can do your part to make it perform safely and efficiently. If you have this unspoken air about you, your examiner will be far more ready to sign your new Temporary Airman Certificate. As you consider that you are a part of the approximately 49.4 million instrument operations logged by FAA towers annually, according to the Instrument Procedures Handbook, you begin to understand the fine and intricate ballet that forms the backbone of air commerce in this century. When you truly understand what you merely think you know, before even the most ruthless examiner your confidence soars like your dreams.
Perhaps your flight instructor, and certainly your DPE, matured aeronautically at a time when a nearly universal pastime was to make fun of, and sometimes even deride, the FAA for its seeming inability to plan and communicate with itself. Just as little children in a school that ignores civilized graces will instinctively shun and sometimes attack a weaker, less attractive child, so the aviation community did with the FAA when plans seemed to waver or change. At last, the Instrument Procedures Handbook raises the dim curtain to NAS planning by giving you a peek at the FAA's Operational Evolution Plan (OEP). Not only does the handbook outline the specific plans and risk stating the timetable, but it also quickly reveals to you that plans mature over time. Just as your career goals must adapt to unseen challenges, so must the FAA's goals change with technology, social, and economic factors. Pilot examiners all too frequently encounter applicants whose plans and expectations in no way recognize the real world. If an applicant lacks maturity for personal planning, how will he fare in planning instrument flights? Both demand realistic research and information sources if safety and efficiency are to be attained.
Continuing its look into the future and area navigation's place in NAS planning, the Instrument Procedures Handbook gives even DPEs a lesson in the imminent future. There are those pilot examiners (yours may be one) still living in the era of tube and fabric, and others so engrossed in electronics that English is their second language, binary being first. This is understandable, since the Global Positioning System (GPS) and its requisite computer entourage has been the most rapidly and widely accepted navigation system in aviation history. Plans for RNAV inform instrument flight students of efficiency benefits and then flow with near perfection into the safety aspects inherent in standardized procedures by addressing controlled flight into terrain and approach and landing accident reduction concepts. Nearly every pilot examiner knows full well that these two concepts remain nearly absent from most instrument training programs.
Discussing accident rates, the handbook necessarily cites statistics that most pilots simply ignore, but the writers draw readers into the purpose of these dry numbers in such a way as to quietly inspire each of us to do our personal best to improve them. I would bet that within a year, those DPEs who regularly conduct instrument rating checkrides will be able to tell which applicants have read Chapter 1 and which have not. Those who have will be comfortably confident of their place in the NAS and their ability to contribute rather than impose.
By giving instructors and applicants reliable information regarding the NAS's capacity and capabilities, confusion should decline and understanding increase among those applicants who have in the past merely recited by rote the regulatory requirement that instrument pilots be aware of ATC delays. The big picture appears in Chapter 1. Introducing these students to the concept of traffic management above and beyond ATC dissolves the prevalent and ancient concept of "us pilots" and "them controllers" like a seltzer tablet in fresh, clean water.
None of Chapter 1 appears in the PTS as you prepare for your instrument checkride. If, however, this article has encouraged you or your flight instructor to read that chapter, it has been successful. If you are a DPE and have not read it, it can only boost your already considerable understanding. As pilot examiners, understanding is our duty, for our decisions form the gateway to the National Airspace System.
Dave Wilkerson is a designated pilot examiner, writer/photographer, and historian. He has been a certificated flight instructor since 1981 with approximately 2,000 hours of dual instruction, and is a single- and multiengine commercial-rated pilot.
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