Question on Low IFR departures for Airlines

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Todd95

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Todd95
Hi everyone. I have a question about how airlines approach Low IFR departures. I’m an IFR rated pilot and have a personal rule that I won’t depart an airport unless the conditions are good enough to let me get back in on one of the approaches.

We have a flight (United) out of KHDN with 100 ft ceilings forecast all day. It got me thinking about how the airlines approach the issue. You all certainly have much more performance than my twin Cessna, better avionics, two person crew and better experience (more and more recent). How do you approach it? Maybe I need to reschedule my flight!
 
https://www.faa.gov/regulations_pol...s_handbook/media/FAA-H-8083-16B_Chapter_1.pdf

The FAA establishes takeoff minimums for every airport that has published Standard Instrument Approaches. These minimums are used by commercially operated aircraft, namely Part 121 and Part 135 operators. At airports where minimums are not established, these same carriers are required to use FAA-designated standard minimums: 1 statute mile (SM) visibility for single- and twin-engine aircraft, and 1⁄2 SM for helicopters and aircraft with more than two engines.
 
If you can’t get back into the airport with lowest approach mins (usually CAT I ILS mins which is 200 and 1/2 mile vis, you need a takeoff alternate. Depending on the aircraft and your company policies, the takeoff alternate airport has to be within a certain radius of the airport (usually within a few hundred miles). Again, depending on fleet, airline SOPs, and airport lighting, the lowest takeoff you can usually do is 500 or 600 RVR. There are SMGCS taxi charts which is basically a low visibility taxi chart that has pre determined taxi routes exiting and entering runways. Most of the time low IFR isn’t an issue because we can always autoland but as a whole, these conditions will cause delays at the airports.
 
Thanks. The responses are helpful. I reference the takeoff minimums whenever I depart as well. For HDN, they’re really just minimum climb rates.
 
We can depart HDN with a minimum visibility of 1/4mi and adequate visual reference (i.e. we can see the runway ahead of us). There is no required minimum ceiling for that departure.
 
Todd95 said:
Thanks. The responses are helpful. I reference the takeoff minimums whenever I depart as well. For HDN, they’re really just minimum climb rates.
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Just be aware that airlines have “tailored” Jeppesen pages that will show different minimums, etc., based on Ops Specs and fleet equipment.

For instance, at some airports, we can takeoff as low as 300 RVR if we have HUD guidance available (we do). That will be on our departure pages, but you wouldn’t see that.

So if you’re taking off and think that the crew is doing something incorrect because you’re not seeing something, just be aware that you may not have all the information that the crew does.
 
Yeah, I remember back in the day more so 0/0 taking off with a flying club plane. It was mostly clear above 800-1000 AGL, fog, WA State. Ok, maybe it was a touch above 0/0, not much, not coming back to land.

Under such conditions I’m not big on early turns, wings level climb for a bit. Yeah, feel free to remind me about terrain & SID turns.

It goes without saying, the attitude gyro is 90+% of the initial scan. Heck, back in the day you would take the A-4 at 80 knots on the runway, under the bag, back seat. I don’t think it gets much more IMC than that, maybe the night cat shot.

Regardless of what one has done or trained for, ‘recency of experience’ is a biggie.
 
There is a lot more to it than you realize for commercial operators.
 
donjohnston said:
https://www.faa.gov/regulations_pol...s_handbook/media/FAA-H-8083-16B_Chapter_1.pdf

The FAA establishes takeoff minimums for every airport that has published Standard Instrument Approaches. These minimums are used by commercially operated aircraft, namely Part 121 and Part 135 operators. At airports where minimums are not established, these same carriers are required to use FAA-designated standard minimums: 1 statute mile (SM) visibility for single- and twin-engine aircraft, and 1⁄2 SM for helicopters and aircraft with more than two engines.
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Well, not really. That may be the published FAR, but op specs for many carriers are much lower.
 
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