iFly GPS Forum

I fly out of a military installation (KVPS) which shares runways with commercial flights and a military aero club.  A number of military installations also have Aero Clubs for flying and training.  I've noticed that approaches, as well as SIDs and STARs where they exist, going into military installations (at least five I've checked) don't populate the fixes for the IFR approachs the way all the others do.  Is there some reason they aren't treated the same as any other airport?

v/r,

Chad  

Chad,

Great observation! I hope you are having fun flying out of there!

I used to fly out of KVPS as well, back in the 1980's, and KHRT in the 1990's...

KVPS may have some HIGH SPEED approaches unique to military test aircraft there...it is one of the most complex "miltiary/civil airfields" I have ever seen. More than once, I got a stern talking to from the tower flying in there in my Beech Skipper! (Going too slow)

On any given day (back in the 90's) we had B-1's, KC-135's, F-16's, F-15's, HC-130's, all sorts of helos, PLUS, all sorts of commercial jets, and the aero club with twins and singles...

The USAF has its' own TERPS people who can design and approve (with the FAA) approaches unique to their mission sets. They have 18 EIGHTEEN different approaches there! See below...

Mike N714AJ

HI Brolin,

Thanks.  Sure...as an example, create a flight plan that ends at KVPS (Eglin AFB) and select any approach.  The predominant approach for civilian a/c tends to be the ILS 19 W.  Note that there won't be any transitions to select and after it loads the fixes won't be laid into the flight plan when loaded. 

Compare that to any civilian airport, where I can select an approach to load, and the transition I want, and once loaded the fixes along the approach and the appropriate altitudes will be loaded into the flight plan. 

I've provided screen shots of a plan to VPS and a plan to DTS (Destin, a nearby civilian airport) with approaches loaded as a comparison.  I've also provided a screenshot of the flight plan to DTS showing the auto populated approach fixes.

I checked several other military installations and all 5 I checked had the same issue.

Hope that helps.  Let me know if you need more info.