Flying the approach
The briefing, the gates that force a stabilized approach, and riding the localizer and glideslope down toward Boston’s Runway 4 Right.
17 min read · Flying IFR: departure to landing
After this lesson you can
- Brief an approach using the real numbers off a chart before flying it.
- State the stabilized-approach heights and the maximum descent rate they enforce.
- Apply the 300-feet-per-mile check to sanity-check a descent profile.
- Describe the sequence of fixes on a real ILS from intermediate segment to decision altitude.
Everything in this module has been leading here. N7421G is established on vectors, descending to 2,000, closing on the final approach course for the ILS Runway 4 Right at Boston Logan - a real chart, a real localizer frequency, a real glideslope, and genuinely low weather that makes flying the numbers matter rather than being an academic exercise.
An approach briefed well in advance is flown almost automatically; one briefed while already established on the localizer is flown one step behind the airplane the entire way down. This lesson is about doing the first kind: knowing the frequencies, the altitudes, and the minimums before they are needed, and then flying a stabilized profile all the way to the decision point.
The rest of this lesson
- 1.Briefing the approach, off the real chart
- 2.Configuration gates and the stabilized approach
- 3.The 300-feet-per-mile check
- 4.The full procedure versus vectors to final
- 5.Descending the ILS: localizer first, then glideslope
- 6.If it is the localizer only
- 7.Energy management: why the stabilized approach is a physics requirement
These 7 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the IFR track. Paid once, yours for good.
Key terms
Try to recall each definition before turning the card.