airfields with a tower that doesn't control pilots?

On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 12:26:19 GMT, Tauno Voipio
wrote:

It seems that you have met AFIS - Aerodrome Flight Information
Service. The guy in the tower is not a qualified ATC controller,
but he's able to provide the minimum information needed for
night or IFR operations.

AFAIK, AFIS is in use on smaller European airports.

Thanks! I'm glad to know it has a name.

Narsarsuaq's airport is open six days a week and only during broad
daylight. Interestingly, the requirements for an IFR approach are
higher than for a VFR approach at home -- as I recall, 6,000 ft
ceiling and four miles viz.

You take up your Initial Point directly over the airport and at 5,800
feet. Then you fly west on a 5.x degree descent for 8 miles. Then you
make a U turn near a 2,500? ft mountain and fly back east on the same
pitch. The air is so clear in Greenland that the ridgeline looked a
couple hundred feet off the starboard wingtip, though it was in fact
about half a mile away.

Altogether, the most fun I've ever had as a passenger in a jet.

(And that doesn't begin to take into account the lissome Faroese
stewardesses. The Faroes -- Iceland -- Greenland, omigod the women! As
Christopher Buckley wrote recently, it's the result of Nordic DNA, six
centuries of keeping strangers out, and eating raw fish for dinner.)



-- all the best, Dan Ford

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