But, the alternate on your flight plan and a practical alternate are different. Understanding that difference improves the utility of your flying and could save the day. It requires enough fuel to fly to the destination, the alternate, and then for 45 minutes at normal cruise speed. The second, An alternate must be filed, and the associated fuel carried, unless the exception applies.
If the destination has an FAA-approved instrument approach and the weather between an hour before and after the ETA is at least a foot ceiling and three statute miles visibility, no alternate is required. There are a couple of gotchas. If your destination has no approach, an alternate is always required. So, for flights less than an hour both should be checked.
Not just any airport qualifies as an alternate per Note that the visibility requirement is the same. Note also that available means in service with appropriate winds, length, etc. These are defaults. Many airports have non-standard minimums for alternate purposes. Finally, no, your destination cannot also be your required alternate; FAA legal weighed in on that in Neither can alternate minimums be lower than circling minimums.
Both of these cases also occur at Napa. Skip to content. Time limit: 0. Quiz Summary 0 of 3 Questions completed Questions:. You have already completed the quiz before. Hence you can not start it again.
You must sign in or sign up to start the quiz. You must first complete the following:. Results Quiz complete. This is where alternate minimums come into play and are a very important part of flight planning, both from a regulatory standpoint but more importantly a safety standpoint. The standard alternate minimums will apply to every airport, while non-standard varies from approach to approach. Sometimes in order to find forecasted weather that meets these standard alternate minimums means selecting an airport that could be or more miles away if there is widespread IFR across the region.
Keeping the and standard alternate minimums in mind, there is one more step you need to take in your flight planning and that is to see if any non-standard alternate minimums might apply to your alternate airport or particular desired approach. The concept behind non-standard alternate minimums is to provide another layer of safety. The ILS Z 17 approach plate is as follows:. On this page, we can scroll down to where Greenville is listed and look at what restrictions apply to our ILS Z 17 approach.
As you can see, this approach is not available when the control tower is closed. The forecasted weather at arrival would need to meet that minimum in order for us to use it if our aircraft was in that category. Some approaches might not be available when local weather is not reported. Occasionally airports will use the weather information from a nearby airport for certain hours of operation or for other reasons.
All of this to say, there are different reasons that the FAA has put non-standard alternate minimums on various approaches, but the important thing to remember is that when planning your IFR flight you need to be sure to read the approach plates of all anticipated approaches to understand all of the implications for that flight. However, non-precision approach minimums would apply to qualify as your alternate, and flight planning must be based on flying the LNAV or circling minimums and not an LPV, for example.
Because that can be an iterative process to decide on the right alternate airport, here are some practical considerations to keep in mind:. Based on either the equipment onboard, your personal preference, or maybe even the non-WAAS GPS nuance mentioned above, the types of approaches at available airports will be a large deciding factor in your alternate options. EppyGA , Oct 5, Plus, god help you if the stars line up and you divert with lost comms.
Now whatcha gonna do? I know the alternate isn't on the strip, but I sorta always assumed they could get it if needed, like lost comms. Well riddle me this; What's the point of fileing the alternate then? I know the base reason is fuel planning, but I mean after you determine a legal alternate and put enough gas on the plane what's the point of actually fileing it?
If ATC can't see it what's the point. Along those lines, say I make a last minute change to my alternate. Like, in the plane taxiing out to the runway I notice my alternate weather isn't legal and call the company and get another alt that is legal. Gas is good, new alt is good, alls well but the wrong airport code is on file.
Would I need to cancel the clearance I already got and file a new plan with the correct alternate? Seems like who cares.
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