Following the Air Force, civil aircraft were also offered a new landing course.

Governor Oleg Chirkunov wants to limit passenger flights over the center of Perm. For this purpose, it is planned to offer pilots a “reverse course” approach to landing from the village of Yugokamsky. For this purpose, ground landing equipment will be modernized within three months. Fighters at the Sokol air base have been using the “reverse course” since the beginning of December. Civil aviation pilots say that they promised to install the equipment last September, and they don’t see any point in the changes.

Governor Oleg Chirkunov intends to seek to expand the practice of using a “reverse course” for landing civil aviation aircraft in Bolshoye Savino. Mr. Chirkunov stated this during a meeting at the Perm airport with the participation of representatives of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Perm Airlines, the Perm Air Traffic Management Center and the Sokol airbase. According to Oleg Chirkunov, when landing on a “direct course” over the city center, the planes cause discomfort to residents with the noise of their engines. The governor also raised the issue of protecting city residents from the danger of a plane crash. “I understand that civil aircraft fly over most European cities,” says Mr. Chirkunov, “but the risks need to be minimized.” The “reverse course” involves landing from the Yugokamsky village at a heading of 32 degrees. Currently, 90% of aircraft landings are carried out at a heading of 212 degrees, flying over the city center.

As Vladimir Koptev, deputy head of the Perm Air Traffic Management Center, explained, in the next three months the air traffic authorities will install the SP-200 landing system, which will allow for precision landings, including in automatic mode, from the village of Yugokamsky. So far, using the “reverse course”, civilian aircraft can only perform landing approaches according to an imprecise pattern. In Bolshoye Savino it can be used when the cloud base is 300 meters and horizontal visibility is 5 thousand meters. “Pilots don’t like a non-precision approach on course 32, since landing is much more difficult,” says Vladimir Koptev.

The commissioning of SP-200, according to Mr. Koptev, will reduce the meteorological minimum at the lower edge of cloud cover to 70 meters, and at horizontal visibility to 900 meters. The equipment has already been purchased and is ready for installation. The installation of the station will be carried out by divisions of the Almaz-Antey air defense concern.

It is worth noting that at the end of November this year, MiG-31 fighters from the Sokol airbase, stationed near the airport, began to use the “reverse course” landing. However, the military notes that the use of this scheme is often impossible due to the wind pattern in the airport area. Thus, landing from the direction of the Yugokamsky village is often hampered by a tailwind. As a result, when winds exceed 5 meters per second, it is necessary to either cancel flights or use a different course.

As noted by the air traffic management center, the wind rose is the main obstacle to the use of a “reverse course” for landing by civil aviation. According to the department, only 35% of the total number of landings will be carried out under this scheme. In the remaining 65% of cases, the landing will be carried out overflying the city center. As a result, Oleg Chirkunov obliged the regional Ministry of Transport to report to him monthly on the ratio of the number of landings performed on the “direct” and “reverse” courses.

Meanwhile, military representatives noted that since the beginning of December, 80% of fighter planes have made landings on the new course. As the senior navigator of the air group Andrey Chenchak explained, work on adjusting the approach scheme has been carried out by the command of the Sokol airbase since 2009. Currently, all necessary changes have been made to the regulatory documents. At the same time, he noted that favorable weather conditions contributed to December statistics. “If the wind had been different, we would have landed on the usual course,” noted Mr. Chenchak.

Meanwhile, civil aviation pilots do not understand the meaning of using a “reverse course” landing in Bolshoye Savino. “Theoretically, it makes no difference which side you land on,” says one of the pilots performing regular flights to the Perm airport, “it all depends on the ground equipment; in the case of Bolshoi Savino, the wind plays a big role.” At the same time, Kommersant’s interlocutor says that the equipment used for “reverse course” landings is long outdated. “It allows you to perform an inaccurate approach, in fact, we are talking about a visual approach,” he says, “they promised to install new equipment back in September last year, but nothing has been done there yet, I doubt that they will be able to do it in three months. Why do this is generally incomprehensible; planes fly over urban areas of almost all major cities in the world, so the idea of the Perm authorities looks like populism.”

Maxim Strugov

Aviators are being turned inside out