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3 Answers

My favorite question from Instrument checkride

Asked by: 3887 views ,
Instrument Rating

Here is question that I was asked on IR checkride. I found out correct answer but still has no full understanding why those answer was correct.

https://skyvector.com/?ll=26.847843375525155,-81.9405670201315&chart=302&zoom=2

Case. You are flying southbond V521 on IFR flight plan in IMC with KFMY Page Field as destination. You was lucky with winds aloft and you are going 10 minutes before ETA.

Last part of your enroute clearance was "... QUNCY DCT" and last assigned ATC altitude was 9000. You just passed QUNCY and picked up KFMY weather (ATIS told you: "... ILS 5 in use...") when suddenly both you radios quit. All attempts to call ATC was failed. But you still have electric power and decided to set up 7600 on transponder: you got full comm fail. 

The question is: 

At what point and when you may start your descend from 9000?

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3 Answers



  1. John D Collins on Feb 02, 2019

    91.185(c)(2) dictates the altitude to be the higher of your last assigned, MIA, or expected. You don’t have an expected altitude, so the last assigned is the highest. So you stay at 9000 and fly to the clearance limit, which in your case is direct to the airport.
    91.185(c)(3)Leave Clearance Limit specifies two options, depending on if the clearance limit is an IAF or not. Since you don’t have an expect further clearance, both cases get you to your IAF where the regulations then say for you to begin your descent at the ETA. In this case there is a hold at the LOM IAF used for the ILS, so you would hold until the original ETA and then commence your descent. As you are at 9000 MSL and need to descend to 2000 MSL as the GS intercept altitude, you descend in the holding pattern until you can fly the inbound leg at 2000 and continue with the GS intercept and the approach. At a descent rate of 500 feet per minute, you will loose 2000 feet each circuit, so with 7000 feet to lose, it would take 3 complete circuits before you were ready to proceed inbound. Of course, you could use a higher descent rate and adjust accordingly.

    Although not supported by the regulations cited, most controllers would prefer you don’t wait and start your approach immediately after reaching the IAF, but you can’t begin your descent until you get there and will still have a few circuits to loose the excess altitude.

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  2. Rkon on Feb 02, 2019

    Thank you John. You explanation is 100% clear.
    At the end of discussion examiner pushed me to the same answer. The reason why I put question here was another answers that I got from CFI’s after exam. Those explanation was like : “after saw your 7600 on radar screen each and every controller will give you green light all the way down to the runway. Again, he will see you, but can’t talk to you.” So, in real life, probably, it will better to not to loose the time on holds but start descent for come to IAF at 2000, as soon as possible.
    But, again, it’s not for checkride. 🙂

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  3. Mark Kolber on Feb 05, 2019

    The thing is, the question has multiple answers.

    There is the pure regulatory one. Then there are a whole bunch of other answers depending on the situation.

    How busy is the airspace? Radar contact or not? Is this the extremely unusual case of “pure” pilot side lost comm – IOW, you still have full NAV capability and it’s not the early signs of an electrical failure or fire. Or is the comm failure a system failure on the ATC side? Do you have traffic available and displayed? Do you have weather and know if you turn right you will encounter visual conditions in 10 miles in a rural area while pushing ahead puts you in the NYC or LA traffic area without comm capability? Is it more important to do what ATC “prefers” most of the time or what ATC is taught is officially expected based on your overall situational awareness.

    Those are just a few off the top of my head.

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