Last year Garmin, in collaboration with Hughes Aerospace, developed Guided Visual Approaches, and it recently added to the list of select airports and runways served by these so-called RNAV visual approaches. In total, there are 46 Guided Visuals to 36 airfields that Garmin says are challenging airport environments. Garmin’s Guided Visual Approaches have been a source of confusion for some, partly because some later Garmin IFR navigators have visual approach procedures in their database. What are the differences? Important ones worth explaining.
Garmin’s plain-vanilla visual approaches provide a straight-course line (basically an extended centerline) from the landing runway and—the important language—an advisory glide path to the touchdown zone with lateral and vertical guidance displayed on the PFD or nav indicator and as a magenta line on the map. The potential gotcha is that these visual approaches don’t ensure terrain and obstacle clearance, and your eyeballs must still be outside the windshield keeping the airplane out of the treetops no matter how dead-nuts you have the needles centered. Still, you load and activate them as you would any procedure in the GPS, and the approach-slope guidance (generally a 3° glide path built with points in space) can also couple to the autopilot while you look outside.
But Guided Visual Approaches take visual approaches to a higher level. You load them into the navigator’s flight plan like any other approach, and all of the Guided Visuals are listed as RNAV, the runway number for the approach, and G in the title to make them easier to identify in a drop-down that also includes the basic visual approaches. You select from multiple transitions for a Guided Visual (including vectors to final), and all of the lateral and vertical waypoints for the approach are in the database. Load and activate the Guided Visual like any other approach, but be sure to select the one you want—it might be easy to ham-fist the selection and pick the guidance-only PAPI-like visual approach.
The map display (GTN Xi navigators, TXi flight displays, and the MFD on G1000 NXi/G3000/G5000 suites) shows an inbound course line with a TOD (for top of descent) tag overlaid on top. In the flight plan, you see altitude constraints (the exact altitude underlined, warning not to descend any lower) for each waypoint segment of the Guided Visual. A magenta chevron on the PFD’s VSI tape provides a target descent rate. You can even load an electronic Guided Visual Approach chart, accessed from the navigator’s procedure loading page. The data bar on the top of the plate reads much like a typical approach chart does, with MSA (minimum safety altitude) for the sector and the approach legs. There are also radius-to-fix or RF legs, a capability of the Xi-series navigators and flight decks.
Interesting is that since these are visual approaches, the only minimums shown for the approach are to maintain VFR at all times on the approach, and a second page of the Guided Visual Approach chart has caveats that these really aren’t instrument approaches and must be used only to maintain a stabilized approach in VMC. And don’t request to shoot the Guided Visual from ATC—they likely won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. When they clear you for the visual, fly it using whatever data you want and maintain VFR.
The Guided Visual Approaches are found in the enhanced Premium level Garmin databases: Navigation plus Guided Visuals, Guided Visuals, or OnePack with Guided Visuals. You’ll find the subs at flygarmin.com. Garmin said it will build more Guided Visuals into the database based on input from pilots, so if there’s an airport that you want charted, tell them about it here using an email approach request. The linked info page also has an airport/runway list of current Guided Visual Approaches.
