DCA Departure

[d328pilot]

A question for those of you that fly out of DCA. When you are departing runway 1 and cleared via the P56 avoidance procedures and the weather is VFR, do you track the 328 radial or follow the river until 4DME then pick up the radial?

 

[FurloughedAgain]

Follow the river!!!

The biggest thing that folks don't realize about DCA is that the departure and arrival procedures to that airport are NOISE ABATEMENT procedures that happen to have restricted airspace nearby. They are not prohibited area avoidance procedures.

When I was flying for your company the biggest mistake I saw was on the river visual 19. Guys were so petrified of inadvertently flying over P56 that they would hug the west side of the river and fly right over the town of Roslyn and the USA Today building. That is exactly what the arrival was supposed to prevent! Fly over the river to the EAST of the island. Furthermore, if you're hugging the right side of the river your last turn to final is extremely steep.

You've got the whole river available. If you widen it out a little bit towards the eastern shore your last turn to final is a much more shallow, comfortable turn for the passengers. Oftentimes tower will ask you to follow the eastern shore to provide them with more spacing. Unless you're blundering towards the Smithsonian you're not going to be violated.

Same thing during the departure. Your clearance will read "follow the noise abatement/P56 avoidance procedure". If you read that procedure there are two sets of instructions. One for VFR, and one for IFR. On the VFR departure they want you to follow the river to reduce your noise signature.

Coming from the south? Same deal. All of those senators and congressmen down there don't want you flying over their houses. When you're cleared for the Mt. Vernon visual, fly directly to the river and stay over the water! Cutting corners over expensive houses doesn't make any friends.

I think that the biggest trouble with new carriers flying into DCA is the lack of training. It's a special airport with some unique procedures. I was fortunate enough to have US Airways captains who had been flying there for YEARS teach me the proper way to fly in and out of there. But pilots for PSA, Chautauqua, Comair, AirTran, etc... they were just handed an approach plate and sent into the fray.

This is a good question and i'm really glad that you brought it up! I miss flying into DCA, LGA, and the Harbor visual into PWM. They are some of the most enjoyable approaches in the US and can be quite beautiful when flown correctly.

 

[88_MALIBU]

Good info FA...

 

[the_dimwit]

I can attest to the comments above. After my grandmother's funeral (1995), I flew back to DCA. I'm guessing here, but I guess the pilot was "hugging the shore" and made a VERY steep turn to final over USA Today/Rosslyn. I didn't mind, because I love roller-coaster rides. However, I heard a few of the passengers take some deep breaths.

It's wild to look at what seems to be a straight-down view from a passenger seat in a commercial airliner. I would imagine it's somewhat the same feeling that some passengers had when landing at Kai Tak during very heavy crosswinds.

--Dim

 

[enigma]

Good post furloughedagain, but, things have changed. There were way too many airliners busting P56. Our procedures dictate that we turn left to 300 degrees and intercept the DCA328R. No longer do we follow the river for the first segment.

I heard it through the grapevine..... the next pilot to bust P56 will get a long forced vacation courtesy of the FEDS.

Ya'll be careful.

enigma

 

[chperplt]

I was told by one of our CPs that we (CMR) have had 2 busts in the 12 months. He said another carriers express unit that has a base in DCA had 4 in one day last Dec.

4 in one day... wow

 

[FurloughedAgain]

Enigma,

I certainly cant comment on your company procedures. Arrivals have a larger noise footprint than departures by their nature so hopefully the points I mentioned regarding the river visual still apply.

Unfortunately, part 91 is not permitted to fly into DCA (thanks TSA) so i'm out of the loop on any changes that may have occured in the arrival and departure procedures at DCA over the last 6 months.

Operations in DCA were just one of my little pet peeves during the time that I worked for d328's company (and chperplt's company as well for that matter).

 

[TheRaven]

If you are departing DCA Northwest, and are on an IFR flight plan, you must intercept the 328 radial and track it outbound. If doesn't matter if it's clear and a million, the procedure is labeled VFR and IFR....not VMC and IMC. I don't know of anyone leaving DCA on a VFR flight plan, so the 328 radial is it.

I will also share this tidbit with you, after having been shown radar plottings of our departure path with speed and altitude data, and the P56 A and B airspace on it.....no one has a chart with the airspace shown TO SCALE...look at the diagrams we have..nothing is to scale......P56B isn't a tiny little dot..it extends almost to the river.

I have never heard the tower in DCA tell anyone to hug the eastern edge of the river during River Visual 19 approaches, and would highly recommend against that procedure, but if you want to try it be my guest.

They are deadly serious about enforcing the Prohibited airspace in DCA...they will come after you if the cockpit is filled with smoke and you are on fire and breach it after losing both engines and the apu....I asked our FAA POI (who sat in the ASAP event review) about the above scenario, and he stated the no matter what the reason, violating it will result in an enforcement action.

I now get practice flying 1/2 dot west of the LDA DME 19 final approach course, and 1/2 dot west of the 328 radial. I'm sure someone will get on here and say that's unnecessary, but having been the target of one of these enforcements for P56B (naval observatory where the VP is supposed to reside but currently doesn't) a couple years ago, I'm gonna err on the side of caution, and the people in the USA today building and Rosslyn can be thankful it's a quiet jet.

 

[FurloughedAgain]

I'll get it out of the way.

Not only is it unnecessary, its non-standard. Any other guessing-games you play with your first officers?

 

[njcapt]

Sorry to hijack the thread, but TheRaven needs to add some spaces in the list of every aircraft he has ever flown so there can be more than three words per line in his responses.

Now returning to the regularly scheduled programming.

 

[250 KIAS]

naval observatory where the VP is supposed to reside but currently doesn't.

Yes he does, at least as of last summer.

 

[TheRaven]

I'll get it out of the way.

Not only is it unnecessary, its non-standard. Any other guessing-games you play with your first officers?

Uhhh....everything about DCA is nonstandard. We don't use a daily codeword anywhere else. We don't have to keep the cockpit locked for the last hour and the passengers in their seats for the last 30 minutes anywhere else. There are no prohibited area avoidance procedures anywhere else. We don't turn nearly this low anywhere else. If all this other stuff is non-standard why shouldn't my approach be (I do brief that I will be west of course at all times, and most are totally comfortable with that). I am telling you....if you are 1/4 of a dot east of course on the LDA/DME 19 you will penetrate P-56B. If you don't believe me try it...I'll be watching CNN for your results.

Guessing games...not really, unless its the color of my underwear....I do like to ask my FOs to calculate the dynamic hydroplaning speed of our tires during landing, the atomic weight of zinc, the average rainfall in the Amazon Basin, and the fastest land animal.

I'm not sure if VP Cheney lives there now or not---seems to me I saw that he continued living in his own home in suburban VA somewhere instead of moving into the official VP residence.

 

[njcapt]

Ahhh, much better.

 

[skyaddict]

Watching airliners climb out Northwest on the river, I'd say 50% of them (including most US Airways flights which i commuted on mostly to Boston for years) follow the river in VFR conditions while 50% of them intercept the 328 radial. I agree though that technically it says IFR (even if clear and a million) to intercept, and those who who fly up the river are trying to be nice guys with the noise. I have a friend in Rosslyn and so I know how the noise of a direct overhead is nasty, but the sound of an enforcement letter hitting one's desk is even worse.

In the DoJet, when I flew up the river, the rate of climb was so fast and steep that even if you reduced power to cruise, even with the seat cranked way up it is very hard to feel your way threading up the river as everything looks straight below you, and it involves a big turn abeam the Kennedy Center. The procedure says to reduce rate of climb to some god-awful shallow rate as noise abatement, but I think it was written for oil burners.

I do miss flying in and out of there but I may get to do it again at another carrier soon. Still, there was always a feeling of "kept my certificate one more day" after you finally departed.

 

[TheRaven]

Per our POI in my previous meeting....Dorniers, EMBs, and CRJs all meet the quietest noise levels (I think it's Stage IV), and are not required to reduce thrust during the procedure.....it's quieter to keep climbing fast. The thrust reducing was written when 727s and DC-9s were the norm.

 

[PCL_128]

Per our POI in my previous meeting....Dorniers, EMBs, and CRJs all meet the quietest noise levels (I think it's Stage IV), and are not required to reduce thrust during the procedure.....it's quieter to keep climbing fast. The thrust reducing was written when 727s and DC-9s were the norm.

What the POI says is just his opinion. Unless you get a formal statement from the big boys at the FAA then you are required to follow the noise abatement procedure. The procedure in your Jepps doesn't specify that Stage IV aircraft are exempt, so the procedure still applies. I agree that it would be much quieter to just climb normally, but we don't have that option. If you follow the procedure and reduce thrust to a setting to achieve a 500 fpm climb, then ATC will normally ask you to "expedite climb" pretty quickly which eliminates the requirement to follow the procedure.

 

[TheRaven]

Well, we have it in our Ops manual, a document the FAA signs off on with each revision, that we don't have to reduce thrust for DCA departures....I'll show em that at the trial, if it comes down to that.