Circling to Land
In 1985 latLonginc's / latlongglobal's founder realized that there was a need to provide the Aviation world with a safer way to Execute Circling to Land procedures without relying on rivers, highways, and buildings as reference points while executing manually flown flights in a Visual environment, hence developed literally hundreds of FMS Line Selectable Approaches to several Airport/Runway combinations worldwide.
These LSAs (Line Selectable Approaches) overly an airport's already published approved NPA approaches down to the Published Circling minima (or higher depending on the air carrier's request). These approaches follow TERPS/PANS-OPS restrictions...pilots would use all AFDS systems while executing the approaches until the PAPI/VASIS was visible & useable, then DISENGAGE all AFDS systems and continue manually to touchdown.
Today, pilots would execute a Non-Precision Approach to minimums, then manually fly their aircraft as they look for visual landmarks in order to intercept and fly a PAPI/VASI to touchdown...so many altitude & airspeed excursions....many incidents & some accidents over the past many years.
We at latlonginc.com / latlongglobal.com, developed software to allow us to create the Lateral / Vertical paths & WGS-84 formatted coordinates for DataBase insertion, updated when necessary on AIRAC cycles.
latlongglobal would liaise with your company's Flight Training Manager and Aeronautical Engineering group to set up an OFF-SIDE Database to be used in the SIM for an AIRAC cycle for the Airline's approval before insertion into the real aircraft's Database on the following AIRAC cycle.
Return to the top of this page and selects one of the two examples of the many FMC Line Selected Approaches designed and flown in a B737NG SIM. One of the approaches in question is the LOC Z RWY18 approach in Chambery France (LFLB/CMF) to Circling minimums...followed by a Circling maneuver to the east side of the field as depicted on the VPT RWY 36 published chart for the Visual maneuver to the east of the field