can someone please give me the definition in laymen terms about his type limitation on the crj?

you can fly an instrument approach to a circle, but you have to be in visual conditions to shoot that approach and commence the circle. this means 1500/3 I believe, unless the approach minimums dictate something even higher than that for your category.


almost every airline i know of has this restriction

At pinnacle (not sure if this goes for everyone) you can circle to land in VMC conditions only with no additional training required. At pinnacle VMC is 1000ft ceiling and 3 miles visibility or higher if the circiling mins are higher for that runway.

so say for example the reported ceiling is 900 ft. the chart says you can circle at 700 ft. we would not be allowed to circle because we would need 1000ft to be legal for our op specs, even though the chart says we can go lower.

We are 1000/3 at AWAC i think....lol isnt a circle done in VMC conditions anyway??? Kind of hard to circle to land in the clouds.

ahhh yes 1000 man i need to get into the books haha. sorry i meant you need those conditions to start the approach. like you cant start the approach with less than that hoping that youll break out at 1000, can you?

yeah, you cant circle to land in the clouds, but cloud clearance requirements don't apply to circling approaches. As long as you can "see" the runway you are good.

i know what you mean about busting those books open. i am studying up for upgrade and there are a "few" things i have forgotten.

if they are announcing circle to land approaches then you have to have ceiling and visibility requirements to even start the approach. pretty much at NO time can you go below 1000ft or have visibility less than 3 miles while circiling.

If i had to guess...it would be like an approach that went below mins...you cant even attempt it.

One of the cool things about the Q200 at Horizon is that we are allowed to circle at published minimums. Q400 and CRJ-700 are restricted to 1,000/3.

Big Sky is the same. We circle at published mins, hence no limitations on the certificate.

VMC means 1000' ceiling & 3 miles visibility.