‘Go Have a Look’ Approaches ‘Must be Stopped’

Pilots cannot be permitted to fly low visibility approaches in which they “go have a look,” hoping to glimpse a runway in instrument meteorological conditions, Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) Chair Kathy Fox says.

In a statement released by the TSB in early August and originally published in Wings magazine,¹ Fox cited a 2018 runway overrun accident in Quebec that prompted the TSB to issue two recent recommendations to Transport Canada (TC) that call for simplification of rules governing instrument approaches in Canada.

“We can’t let pilots ‘go have a look’ and see if they can figure out where the runway is,” Fox wrote. “These approaches must be stopped before they even begin.”

One method of addressing the problem, she said, would be to implement the two TSB recommendations ─ first, that TC “review and simplify operating minima for approaches and landings at Canadian aerodromes” and second, that the agency “introduce a mechani…