palgia841

That is utter nonsense.
From "The Pilot's Manual - Instrument Flying" 4th Ed, page 322: "If only the full ILS procedure is approved for a particular runway, and a localizer only approach without the use of a glideslope is not authorized, then the chart will carry the warning LOC ONLY N/A".


To be honest I am quite shocked to hear that you guys believe the loss of GS requires an immediate missed approach. I am not really sure who came up with this misconception.
Having said that, if you re-read my first post, I said that you should only continue with the LOC-only procedure IF you have adequately briefed the procedure and have taken the appropriate steps to ensure you are able to identify the LOC MAP (ie. starting time over OM). Personally I include a briefing for a LOC-only approach for every ILS I fly (that's how I was taught from day 1).

Now a few years ago we had an issue at the university where I was instructing, where several FAA DE at the local FSDO were "busting" applicants for their Instrument rating or CFII on the basis of their failure to start the time over the FAF while executing an ILS approach. Their resoning was that, if the applicant had lost the glideslope, he would not be able to revert to a localizer only approach because they would be unable to identify the missed approach point. It is therefore implied that reversion to a LOC after GS failure is perfectly acceptable. In fact, according to these FAA examiners, reversion to a LOC approach was so important to warrant the failure of the ILS approach if the applicant did not plan for this possibility. While I always taught the good operating practice of starting the time over the OM on ALL ILS approaches (except for those approaches where the localizer MAP can be identified by a means other than time), I did not agree with the FAA's decision to fail an applicant for failure to do so. In other words, if you are evaluating me on an ILS approach, and you simulate failure of the GS, and I forgot to start the time over the OM, I should be able to execute the missed approach without failing the maneuver. You always have the option of executing the missed approach if the GS fails (like with any other IAP), but you also have the perfectly legal option of continuing with a localizer approach.

Whether or not it is a good idea to continue the approach or go missed is purely subjective. In the past few years I have asked many very experienced pilots, both military and civilian, and received mixed answers. The main factors are height above ground where the failure occurs, familiarity with the approach, basic airmanship abilities, sinhle-pilot vs 2 crew, weather, ect

Generally speaking, most people would agree that if you failed to brief the LOC-only minimums during the approach briefing, then you should probably go missed since looking up that information when close to the ground, in IMC, is probably not a smart idea.
However I can list several airports where I am very familiar with the ILS/LOC procedures and I would not hesitate to switch from ILS to LOC-only if the GS were to fail.

Quick IFR 101 review.....back to basics. Look at what question I found in the FAA Airman Knowledge Test Question Bank for the Instrument Airplane rating:

480. J01 IRA
Immediately after passing the final approach fix in bound during an ILS approach in IFR conditions,
the glide slope warning flag appears. The pilot is
A) permitted to continue the approach and descend to the DH.
B) permitted to continue the approach and descend to the localizer MDA.
C) required to immediately begin the prescribed missed approach procedure.

Taken from http://www2.faa.gov/education_resear.../media/ira.pdf

I'll give you a hint..... the correct answer is NOT C.