How do aircraft land in fog?!

hi everybody better welcome to mentor in the adult video podcast as always hope you're doing absolutely fantastic today on the video guys we are going to be talking about how to land in really dense fog can the aircraft land completely by itself and how does the proceed you look like this video is brought to you together with Skillshare now Skillshare is an online learning community with tens of thousands of courses in pretty much anything that you can imagine now if you want to for example build your own YouTube channel or learn by your flight simulator

how to UM fly an aircraft for your private pilot license well then the five on the first of you who uses this link here below will get two months of premium membership absolutely for free so check it out [Music] right guys so what we're going to be talking about today and what what I will be doing is I'm gonna explain first of all how an instrument landing system works just shortly and then I'm gonna talk about what the requirements are and why aircraft are not always just landing automatically if they have the capability to do

so and at the end I'm also going to go through the entire procedure now if you have the mentor aviation app I would highly recommend that you green and you get the cat 3 approved collection ok because all of the things that I'll be discussing today the procedures and how we'll fly it is there and the collection will cost you about 1 euro ok so check it out together with this explanation so first of all how an ILS works now in order for us to come in and land in a stabilizing good way the aircraft

needs to be aligned with the runway centreline from quite far out about 10 miles normally and it also needs to find where should be altitude wise to come in and land at the beginning of the runway where it's supposed to there are different types of approaches we have something called non-precision approaches which are basically a little bit more simple nav aids that will help us to align ourselves but not necessarily show us where we should be altitude wise we can't use those for outer land ok we need to use a system called an instrument landing

system an ILS now Annihilus if you've been taxing close to runway you might have seen that at the end of the runway it tends to be these antennas and generally orange in color and that's the localizer antenna those are the antennas that shows us where we are in correlation with the centreline ok and very quickly the way that they work is that they send out two lobes of radio signals they have different frequencies and our instrument landing system receiver onboard will interpret those signals to find a sweet spot so where does two different eyeless Ignace

interact in a specific way the ILS receiving olsat ok I'm now on the Santa if we turn a little bit out to the right well then one of the frequencies would be you know more will be shining through more and then the system knows that oh I'm a little bit more today left I need to go to the right and the same on the other side so it uses these differences in frequencies to align ourselves bang on the middle of the center line now very close to the touchdown zone generally very close to where the

poppies are originated and if you don't over pop assists I have a video for that as well well there isn't light slope antenna and it works exactly the same it sends out two lobes with different frequencies and together all of these four lobes will give a perfect sweet spot where the our system was know exactly that right we're both on the glide slope correct in altitude and we correct a horizontally as well now this system can be used to out land the aircraft providing that the aircraft have all of the systems needed to do so

not all our aircraft can out land you have to the aircraft has to be specifically built for it and certified for it all right now in terms of what the airport needs in order to be out land approved or category 2 or category 3 approved is that it needs quite a lot of stuff actually first of all the what we call the sensitive area which is the area close to the antennas where they're sending out the signals it needs to be completely free they cannot be any kind of obstacle in front that might interfere with

the signal so when the airport certify themselves with cat3 and not all quite a few airport actually or Katri approved they need to make sure that everything is completely flattened out so that might mean actually like retaking where buildings and flattening out the ground around and also and this is crucial to understand we cannot have aircraft taxiing into the critical area when the airport is in low visibility procedures using the cat 3 so this means that during normal operations we use a minima that's called cat 1 that will bring the aircraft down to about 200

feet above ground and in that case there is requirements in the critical area of the antennas not that big of a deal it's still there but it's not it's not - we don't have to be too careful with it okay when we start to go into low visibility procedures for cat 2 or cat 3 approaches then the the aircraft that are taxiing out for takeoff for example they cannot go as close to the runway as they would normally they have to stop earlier in order to make sure that the area is completely clear so this

means that when these procedures are forth there's less movements on the apron people are going to have to wait to taxi out more right so that's one thing on top of that you will have technical requirements on the system as well you have to have backup generators for example that have a minimum switchover time so if there would be a power cut on the airport these backup generators need to be able to switched on within a really really short timeframe and there are other requirements to the calibration of the systems as well so it's quite

a lot of upgrades that needs to be done for an airport or a runway to be kept 3 approved now on top of that the same problem exists with aircraft that are landing because an aircraft is coming in and doing an outer line will be inside of the critical system so that or a critical area so that means that the aircraft that's coming in to land behind the aircraft needs to have more separation as in we cannot come in and be separated with the same minimal distance as we would normally we have to wait more

and this will of course build up the holding patterns around the airport so when you have fog and we're using cat 3 approaches there will be much less aircraft landing per hour and this is not efficient okay and this is why the airport only use cap - or cat 3 approaches if it's really necessary to do so okay I hope that makes sense so that's from an airport point of view and from air traffic control point of view and when it comes to the aircraft itself the aircraft also like as mentioned before needs to be

certified to be cat3 approved it needs to have certain systems so for example we need to have two working engines you can't do a country approach single engine not with a 737 at least you need to have two different hydraulic systems and electrical systems two different inertial reference units ID AR use and to working out two pilots to working independent ILS receivers and a few other things like windshield wipers and things like that and the reason for this is that it becomes much more critical that all of these systems are working properly because we are

going to be much closer to the runway before we actually see the runway when we fly a cat3 approach so as i mentioned before if we're flying a normal category one ILS approach the aircraft will be brought down inside of cloud down to about 200 feet at 200 feet the pilot flying needs to see the runway sufficiently enough in order to make a manual landing okay with a category 2 ILS approach we can go down as low as a hundred feet of the runway now this is very close to the runway yeah but at a

hundred feet we still need to be able to judge the wrong way environment we have to be able to see that yes we are in the correct spot but it is too close to actually disconnect and hand fly it down so a cap to approach is automatically flow like a three approach will bring us all the way down to 50 feet Radio 50 feet radio for those of you who knows how and how a an approach is being constructed is where the aircraft should be over the threshold so all approaches are always made but almost

always made to have the aircraft passing the threshold at 50 feet so at 50 feet you could break clouds or see enough on the runway to in order to judge your position we still need to do that but of course at 50 feet we don't have time to disconnect and start doing any any kind of maneuvering so the aircraft will fly itself down and it will land automatically okay before we go into the actual procedure and how to fly it there's one thing that you need to understand as well a lot of people are asking

me well if the aircrafts can learn by itself why don't you just do that all the time well I guess imagine they are mentioned before first of all it will increase the time it takes right it will increase all of the movements on the ground the separation behind all of that okay but also the aircraft doesn't land as good as we do at least most of the time the aircraft will always start to flare at 50 feet okay as it comes in over the threshold it would initiate the flare and land but if a normal

pilot is flying we tend to initiate the flare at about between 20 and 30 feet so this means that the aircraft if it's during an out land will actually use more runway during the landing in the case of a flaps 40 outer land it uses about 140 meters more and in case of a cat tree approach northland flown with flaps 30 it's about 185 meters more so we tend to be doing it a better job than the aircraft does the only reason we are using the outer line really is because we don't have enough visual

references at that late stage of the approach to do anything we let the aircraft land we're monitoring the aircraft and if we see something we don't like well then we execute a go-around okay great so so what about the actual approach proceed you down how is it flow well first of all before we start to to even think about flying a category approach there's a couple of things we need to check for example is the airport approved down to cat 3 minimus and we'll receive that on our upload approach plates and also each company have

different airport that are approved to UM to use the cat 3 so in some cases even though a runway might be approved down to Katherine minima that has to have been checked out and certified by the company in itself so we check that the approved list is active that the approach is has cat 3 minimums okay second we check the tech log of the aircraft because the aircraft might be cat 3 normally but if there's any kind of technical fault to the aircraft some of these faults might render it non cat tree so for example

in our case I'm missing out of trouble and flying without auto trouble we can't do a cat 3 approach and then the aircraft is not cat 3 we can't fly also the pilots we need to make sure that we are certified so during our type rating we will do a specific session to practice category 3 and category two approaches that has to be done and then each six month when we do our recurrent training and checking we also do low visibility procedure training and we have to every six months do at least one actual cat

3 it doesn't have to be carry whether but we have to do the full cap tree procedure in order to be certified that can also be done in the same if whatever reason it hasn't been done okay so the way that we check this is that the we take up the the quick reference handbook the curate and inside there there's a checklist and we go through that checklist first of all that checklist will check all of these things it will also state that the first officer is going to be pilot flying for the approach the

captain is gonna be palette monitoring but the captain will be landing so here you see a bit of a difference from what we normally do it will go through some limitations so for example they can't be in a report of a wind shear obviously because the aircraft is not certified to the land through wind shear we add their wind requirement so we can only do a cat 3 if the wind headwind is less than 25 knots crosswind is less than 20 knots and tailoring is less than 10 knots so we verify that to watch the

weather lower visibility procedures needs to be enforced we know that from listening to the automatic weather information the eighties and the aircraft you know all of these things have to be together and approve once we've done that well then the first officer which is going to be pilot flying will do the approach briefing and the pro treating is very similar to normal ILS approach briefing but instead of using barometric minimums which we normally do in a cat one we would switch over the minimum sectors to radio altimeter because we're using the radio altimeter to guide

us down to minimum because so exact okay so it's 50 feet over the wrong way the radio altimeter would be measuring that and would give us exactly when we're 50 feet over there over the runway which is the threshold so that will be set to radio will set the minimis down and then we will also brief a little bit about what's different with this approach because since it's very close to a normal cat one but not really it's really important that we brief it so that we don't miss something one difference is that when we

are clear for the approach and we are on an intercept heading towards the around we're gonna land on then the pilot flying will arm the second autopilot alright so we will start by arming approach mode on the mode control panel and then the pilot flying will call come on a and come on B we have to highlight that because if you forget to arm the the second out of the pilot before about 1500 feet well it's a little bit lower than that actually but if it's been forgotten then at some point during the approach you

will not be able to engage it anymore and you can't fly the cat we approach and you have to go around so intercept heading clear for the approach approach modes armed come on a and B right now both out the pallet is there but they won't be flying the aircraft yet so the outer pilot who was in command first will continue to fly the approach down to about 1400 feet and round there is going to switch from single channel to both channels being in be engaged okay so come on yeah this is something that we

have to verify it's happening as well now after that obviously we're taking flaps one flaps five as normal we will configure the aircraft little bit earlier for you know for landing flaps at five nautical miles approximately from the airport that gear down flaps fifteen complete Landing checklist down to flaps and then proceeded down to normally flaps forty could be doing in flaps 30 as well but generally it's flaps forty landing and the reason we want flaps forty learning is because you have a slightly lower nose attitude with flaps forty the flap for do you have

approximately zero pitch up and down with flaps 30 you have about one degree pitch job the problem with that is that the visibility is so low in this foggy conditions that what they run with the cockpit cutoff angle as we talked about as in the way that the nose is in the way of our visibility might actually be the difference of us seeing enough at minimums or going around so with flaps forty nose is slightly lower we see slightly better same with crosswind crosswind from the right for example would have the aircraft heading with a

nose towards the right to keep a crab angle to land and that will actually help the captain was with one who has to see the runway more alright because the nose is now out of the way you can see the the approach lights a bit more but on the other hand crosswind from the left is going to have the opposite so Lisa I mean we're talking tiny little differences here that they will be really really important at the end okay so now we continue to fly with pause five miles we've configured we take down two

flaps forty we need to be have the aircraft stabilized at the minimum of a thousand feet of the runway so stabilized means that the aircraft is completely configured for landing the trust has come up to the value that we need to have and everything looks good checklist are complete alright continue to fly at 500 feet we have to verify that the aircraft is ready to do the outer land so at 500 feet now not based on barometric pressure but on radio altimeter the captain I will call 500 feet radio and then other checked if like

mold annunciator on my primary flight display and called flare arm because you will see a little white flare annunciator there okay that's important because that will tell me that the aircraft is indeed ready to do an outline I kept one ILS approach single channel ILS approach that will not happen so I'll quote 500 radio flare on the first officer will respond by checking the array altimeter on his/her side saying passing 460 feet radio flare on or whatever they see after that at about 400 feet you'll see something that you won't see on a single channel

ILS which is that the trim is starting to move backwards it's starting to move the aircraft to be nose light okay you see that happening and you see the yoke going forward to counteract that now the reason this is happening is three okay first of all if something happens if the outer pilot would disconnect for example the outer pilot is sorry the aircraft is now set to pick up to make sure that it doesn't pitch down for example because we're too close to the ground the second thing is to help it during the flare to

actually execute the flare and the third thing is to help it during the go-around right so it has to have back trim in the outer pilots on the 737 is using a so-called fail passive system so I haven't no I haven't told you why we have two outer pilot flying it but the reason for it is that both those outer pilots are completely separated from each other they're using its own ILS receiver and its own flight control computer to tell the aircraft what to do right the aircraft is flying down using both of these inputs

and if one of those inputs and would suddenly say listen turn right now the other one is saying no no continue straight ahead the other pilot and the aircraft doesn't really know what to do with that so in a failed passive system what will happen is that the outer pilot channel that gives the least input will be the one governing so it will just continue with one who's saying go straight ahead but it will then disconnect everything because it doesn't know which one of them are actually right so it's failed passive disconnects and obviously at

point disconnects we have to execute to go on because we can't do enough to land anymore this is why you're using two outer pilots and this is why also that you have that back trim in case that happens at low altitude the aircraft will initially pick chop to get away from the ground okay but what this also means is that once this trim back happens if you done have a failure of some sort and it does disconnect the pile of flying have to execute the go around and has to remember that all of this back

trim is in because the aircraft is gonna want to pitch up especially if you're gonna add engine trusts remember that the engines are mounted under the wings and when you put trusts on they are going to want to raise the nose as well and you might get too much bit job so if there is a failure after that point the pile of flying it's gonna be the first officer in most cases will have to remember to push forward trim forward in order to get the aircraft from pitching too much okay so now we're below 4-1

feet they're really really close to the ground okay this is where it starts getting critical that we know our stuff the captain will be sitting a little bit higher than I would normally in order to avoid that cockpit cutoff angle that I was talking about before and I'll be looking for visual cues now I can call anything that I see so if the fog has lifted slightly and I see approach lights I can call that that will relax the first officer a little bit so as they approach lights if I don't see anything I'm quiet

and I'm looking out up minimums there needs to be a really clear call either continue in which case I have seen enough I see enough of the runway which might be just three lights ahead of me or something like that but I know that I'm in the right place if I call continue I will remove the hand from the trust lever because the first officers sit in thinking go wrong right that's their job they need to think I'm gonna go around okay there to go around man or woman I am concentrating or landing so I

say continue I'll take the controls just monitoring it because the aircraft is landing by itself remember let the main gear touchdown reverses no skier touchdown disconnect out the pilot now to throttle use the rudder pedals to keep the aircraft going straight down the center line okay so this is me taking controls at minimums I've get down to minimums and I don't see anything I will call go around the aircraft set up for that the first officer is ready for that so he or she we just pressed the Olga button say Gorham flap 15 second rest

okay yeah cough would pick up and fly the a the missed approach automatically this is a difference between cat one as well because if we do a cat one when we pressed Olga that disengages the autopilot okay three your cat to do a channel involved the aircraft will fly the missed approach pitch wise and lateral wise itself so that way paper soft will just continue retract the flaps on schedule so 400 feet select a roll mode al now for example a missed approach would have been briefed in the approach briefing flaps 5 flaps 1 flaps

up according to the speed schedule and then and when the aircraft is Pitzer reaching the missed approach altitude when it goes into altitude acquire it will then revert from dual channel to single channel and we're back to single channel flying again okay so that's how the actual procedure is flown and it has to be film very accurately because we're really really close to the ground you're so close that sometimes if we don't see enough at minimums in the aircraft and the first officer is just a little bit late with executing the go around the aircraft

might actually touchdown that's part of the go-around that's perfectly okay alright if you have X if you initiated the go-around maneuver and you haven't selected it reverses the aircraft can touch down and then continue with the missed approach that's fine just be careful not to be afraid of it and start pulling because that might actually disconnect the autopilot and then you have a problem because then you have all of that back pressure sorry back trim that we were talking about so do a nice slow but accurate go around and that's it now if you want

to see how this is actually done like I mentioned before in the video get the mentor aviation up it's completely free to download ok inside of the app you will have a chat which is gonna get much much better within the next few months alright in the next few weeks actually you have loads of different collections and stuff that I've done but you can also see my training collections alright the training collections does cost a little bit of money that's how I finance actually building the app but like this cat3 collection will cost you one

dollar or one euro okay if you want to see all of the collections then inside there there is a all-in-one collection it's about two hours of instruction how to set up the aircraft how to do a reject to take of an evacuation how to fly cat three approaches teacups approaches or other tcats maneuvers all the kinds of stuff that will cost you about $10 or so or if I have a special sale which I do now and then you might go down to five all right but you can get that and in those collections of

film at the moment in 360 that will change in the future because I'm creating new material as we speak now more stuff will come but it will be in wide-angle and much much more detailed okay but get that and then you can follow through you can listen to this video and then you can see how to actually done unable to make much more sense okay do that now I want to send a huge thank you to the sponsors of this episode which is Skillshare now if you have something that you're thinking about doing maybe it

is starting your own YouTube channel or maybe you want to improve your Instagram pictures or you want to learn how to fly or how to prepare for your private pilot license using your home simulator well in that case I highly recommend you to use this link here below the five on the first of you who do so will get two months of premium membership scheme share absolutely for free so you can go in and you can try out all of these courses and see what it's all about highly recommend you to do so okay have

an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time bye bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]