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From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
36 • TWIN & TURBINE
March 2019
Enfoque No Autorizado
(Approach Not Authorized)
Trees, TERPS and Bilingual Lingo
Perhaps our litigious, lawsuit-happy society is to blame for the migration of carefulness into all aspects of our lives. With the plethora of scattered notes and cautions, even our instrument procedures can seem as if they’re written in a foreign language. But threatening cautions, warnings and notes usually appear after something malo (bad) happened to someone. Usually by someone not paying attention or not thinking lo suficientemente por delante (far enough ahead): don’t drink el cloro (bleach), don’t swallow anzuelos de pesca (fish hooks), and don’t put any persona (person) in your wash- ing machine, or la mascota (pets) in the microwave oven. And that steaming cup of caliente coffee? That’s Español for hot, not the flavor. Have these types of low-IQ cautions made us so numb that we sometimes ignore warnings and notes? After all, do we really need to be told to keep our tongue away from a frosty (escarchado) flag pole or a running chainsaw from our sensitive body parts (lindas nalgas)? Luckily for us pilots, procedural cautions and notes are not as silly as these; they are foot-stomping, attention-getters that can prevent something bad from happening – if we read them.
Read ’em and Weep
As the above diligently researched (not really) bilingual examples often times imply, we are spoon-fed and coddled by manufacturers, the FAA and our mother in order to avoid shooting our eye out with a BB gun, burning our tongue on coffee, slicing our anatomy with power tools or flying into an obstruction with our airplane. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for us gringos if Aviation English was not the universal language on the radio and in our flying pub- lications. Fortunately, U.S. in-flight publications are written in plain-old, El English-o. So then, if we are spoon fed the restrictions on ODP’s, SID’s, STAR’s and approaches, all in our native tongue, why then do we sometimes mess them up? Recently, one reason was addressed on a Beechcraft Owners and Pilots discussion board. The thread was about ATC clear- ances being issued despite the procedure not being “legal.” The case in point was an instrument approach, at night, to a
runway in which the approach had been changed by a note that said the procedure was now “NA at Night.” A TERPS (Standard Terminal Instrument Procedures) review had de- termined that some trees had grown tall enough to become an official obstruction to night operations. The chart change had snuck by many users due to familiarity with the old procedure and an inadequate review of the new one. Most of the participants in the conversation believed, however, that it would be helpful if ATC would not issue a clearance to do an unauthorized thing such as this approach at night. An understandable desire because it’s easy to confuse an ATC “clearance” with an FAA “authorization.”
Leaders, Lemmings and Legality
The English language is replete with synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, homophones, homographs, heteronyms and words with subtle (potentially dangerous) and similar, but different, meanings depending on their use, context and in- tent. For example, a current English word-use that bugs me with ATC is this: “Follow the Citation, taxi to 17R via delta, foxtrot and bravo. Cleared to cross 9R.” Sometimes the “fol- low” means “go after” the Citation that is crossing in front of you and sometimes it means “follow them” to where they’re going, which may not be along the described route or even to 17R. What’s a literal, English-speaking piloto (pee-lot-toe) to do? If I follow ATC’s instructions literally, without context, common sense or a query to ATC, my 737 could end up at the FBO parked next to a Citation instead of at 17R. And by the way, the “authorization” notes on the airport diagram page likely say that the GA ramp is restricted to wingspans less than xxx and weight less than xxx – despite ATC’s “clearance” to “follow” the Citation. There may also be wingspan restric- tions on the taxiways themselves headed to 17R that permit the Citation to take that route but not my 737. Other times it’s not the clearance, the authorization or the English language that is confusing; it’s the sneaky changes that occur every 28 days to previously familiar restrictions and notes – like those pesky trees that caused the night approach to become illegal.