Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
It has been a long time since I flew GA into non-controlled fields, but I thought I remembered straight-ins as being the LEAST favored pattern entry. Did I imagine this or can someone back this up?
USMCFLYR
The most-favored is a 45 join to the downwind. The rest are all in the same boat.
AFAIK, straight in is "least favored" in the sense that without VASI or some other glidepath indication, it's the most difficult for an average pilot to visually gauge and stabilize his approach. But with plenty of straight-in instrument approaches into nontowered fields (and many more now than before GPS) it's hard to justify it being unfavored from an operational standpoint.