Aircraft choice?

Howdy Robert,

As long as it's a CAT 1 aircraft, feel free to use it. Yoland says all Bush ops - Old timers - Seaplane & Amphibians - VFR Special aircraft are CAT 1, so take your pick!

I'll add this question to this thread because it's somewhat related. My latest assignments took me to Appleton WI KAQP, but got concerned about the right plane for the job when I looked at the approach plate and noting the runway size of around 3500.

Now being able to fly Cat-2 planes, I had selected ERJ-145, as it was nice to get into a jet again. However, ERJ-145 seems to require runway distances in excess of 4000. So - it was back to another Prop plane for this flight.

I chose the Dash-8, and began to learn how to fly yet another plane. It seems much time is spend searching the Internet on information such as Ref speeds in addition just to learn the plane and it's handling.

Is not Appleton a bit small of an airfield to land a Cat-2 plane on?

Did I not read somewhere in a related post that we should be trying to fly our scheduled flights in the Category we're currently assigned, not at a lower Cat?

At any rate - it's been great fun flying and learning. Appleton did give me an opportunity to do read about circle approaches - as all IA approach were on RWY 13, yet with a pretty good wind from the north, RWY 31 made better sense.

Fortunately - or unfortunately, ATC dropped me out of the clouds approaching from the south and I was able to fly straight in on a visual approach to RWY 31.

I did note the absence of any visual glide slope lighting too (no VISI or PAPI - or whatever the other configuration is called). So...it was pretty much guess the glide slope as I came in.

John,

Excellent Question ! I think this is the first time it has ever come up. Let me generalize it: have our published schedules been checked to insure that all Cat N airplanes can operate from all airfields in the Cat N schedule ? The answer is NO. I have checked KAQT and find that, of our Cat II aircraft, only the DHC-8 can operate from that field. I see your point about not having to learn another plane. I suggest that you pick the plane you want to use and get good at that. If you are assigned a flight which that plane can't accomplish, send me an E-mail and I will change the assignment. By the way, there is nothing in our rules against using a plane of a lower category to accomplish a scheduled flight. By examining the schedules of "real" airlines I have concluded two things: (1) Most of them operate fewer than seven distinct categories (weight classes) of aircraft and (2) The choice of category of an aircraft assigned to a given route appears to be primarily a matter of the anticipated passenger load and secondarily a matter of the distance of the flight. Thus we find airlines operating both DC-10s and B-737s from KLAX to PHNL.

Mike Daugherty
MSP Hub Manager

<br /><br /><!-- editby --><br /><br /><em>edited by: Westcoast, Jan 28, 2012 - 02:34 PM</em><!-- end editby -->