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Selecting the Approach: ILS RWY 27L at Atlanta

Premiumintermediate
📍 Route: KDCA → KATL - selecting the ILS RWY 27L approach⏱ ~9 minutes📊 10 steps🎓 Descent & Arrival

On the Airbus you do not type a landing runway. You choose an approach, and the runway comes with it - then the feeder route, then the arrival, in that order.

What this scenario covers

The ARRIVAL page is a two-level pick, and the level people expect to come first comes last. It opens on the approaches, because the approach is the selection that carries the runway. Choose the ILS to a particular runway and the page then offers the approach transitions - the FCOM calls them APPR VIAS, the feeder routes that take you from the arrival onto the final - and only after that does it list the arrivals themselves, with their en-route transitions beside them.

Each choice narrows the next. The arrival you pick has a branch built for the runway the approach fixed, and the page checks that the feeder route you took is one that arrival actually reaches, dropping it if it is not. Where only one survives the check, it is selected for you rather than offered as a question with a single answer.

How it applies in flight ops

The order matters on the line because the clearance arrives in the opposite one. Centre gives you an arrival and a transition long before the approach is known, and the runway is often the last thing settled - sometimes not until the ATIS on descent. Programming in the page's order rather than the clearance's is a habit worth building deliberately, because the alternative is entering an arrival, then discovering the runway branch and the feeder route have to be revisited anyway.

The other habit is verification. An arrival programmed is not an arrival checked: the crew scrolls the plan end to end looking for a discontinuity, a duplicated fix or a branch that does not match the runway briefed. And the approach page carries the confirmation - the approach the aircraft holds is displayed there, so a mismatch between what you briefed and what the box has is visible before anyone starts down.

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Step-by-step: Selecting the Approach: ILS RWY 27L at Atlanta

  1. Set the route. Type KDCA/KATL into the scratchpad and press 1R.

    A short domestic sector where the arrival is most of the work. 475 nm is the great-circle figure; you will also see 547 quoted, which is statute miles.

  2. Set the cruise level. Type 340 and press 6L.

    Nothing here turns on the level. The FMGS wants a vertical plan before an arrival means anything to it, and FL340 is ordinary for the sector.

  3. Open the destination's lateral revision. Press F-PLN, then press 3L on the KATL line.

    Every lateral change starts at a LAT REV, and which waypoint you opened it on decides what you are offered. ARRIVAL> appears only when the revision is at the destination - on an en-route waypoint that key is something else entirely, on the real aircraft as much as here.

  4. Press 1R (ARRIVAL>).

    The page opens on the approaches, not on the arrivals. That order is the aircraft's, and it is worth understanding rather than memorising: there is no runway field anywhere on this page, because the approach is what carries the runway. Choose the ILS to 27L and you have chosen the runway.

  5. Atlanta Center: "expect the OZZZI TWO arrival, LEAVI transition, ILS runway 27L." Press the LSK on the I27L row, slewing the list with ▼ if you need to.

    I27L is the ILS or LOC RWY 27L approach, spelled the way the coded data spells it. Brief it as "the ILS runway 27L" and read it on the box as I27L, and do not invent a form in between: ILS OR LOC RWY 27L is coded as two separate procedures, and nothing in the source data says which chart each one belongs to. The row carries 27L's length and the localiser identifier, IFSQ on the screen and I-FSQ on the plate. It carries no frequency, because the coded procedure data holds the identifier and not the number - an absence, rather than a guess.

  6. The page has moved straight on to the approach VIAs - the rows are fix names now, and 2L reads <STARS. Press the LSK on the ROMMM row.

    This is the question the FCOM calls APPR VIAS - which feeder route you join the final on - and the arrival chart answers it: landing 27L off the OZZZI TWO, you select the ROMMM transition. Note the order. The page asked for the VIA before it asked for the arrival, because the VIAs belong to the approach you just picked. When you choose the arrival in a moment, the page re-checks your VIA against it and drops it if that arrival never reaches ROMMM - a VIA the arrival cannot reach is not a VIA. And where only one survives that check, the page selects it for you rather than asking a question with one answer.

  7. Now the arrival. Press the LSK on the OZZZI2 row, slewing with ▼ if you need to.

    OZZZI2 is the OZZZI TWO arrival. Picking it after the approach is the aircraft's order rather than the chart's, and the two meet at the runway: the approach fixed 27L, and the arrival has a branch built for 27L that hands you to the feeder route. Watch line 1 fill in as you press - APPR, VIA and STAR, left to right - and note that ROMMM is still there, because the OZZZI TWO's 27L branch does reach it.

  8. Take the en-route transition. Press the key on the LEAVI row in the RIGHT-hand column.

    The transition is where you join the arrival from the en-route structure. LEAVI is out on the North Carolina/South Carolina line, which is roughly where a direct Washington–Atlanta track crosses it - which is why Center gave you that one. Taking the transition that matches your clearance is what keeps the plan continuous; taking a different one strings you in at a corner of Atlanta's airspace nobody cleared you to.

  9. Commit it. Press 6R (INSERT*).

    INSERT strings one route into the plan, in the order it is flown: the transition, then the arrival's common route, then its 27L branch, then the VIA, then the final approach segment - with the repeated fix at each join dropped. What it does not splice is the missed approach. Those legs are flown only on a go-around, and putting them in the plan would route you through a climb nobody has selected. Scroll the plan and read it end to end; that habit is worth more than any one procedure.

  10. Confirm the approach reached the aircraft. Press PERF, then NEXT PHASE> (6R) until the title reads APPR, and read the FINAL field.

    FINAL reads I27L, and it reads it because the plan carries that approach - not because anything assumed one. With no approach in the plan the field shows dashes, which is the honest answer: a page that always said ILS would be stating something it has no way to know. This is also the seam between the two halves of an approach setup. Choosing the approach is the ARRIVAL page, and it is what you just did; QNH, temperature, wind, VAPP and the minima are the numbers that go beside it, and they are a separate drill on this page.

What to take away

  • The approach carries the runway. There is no runway field on the arrival page.
  • The feeder route (APPR VIAS) belongs to the approach, and the arrival is chosen last.
  • Choosing an arrival re-checks the feeder route against it; an unreachable one is dropped.
  • What gets strung into the plan is one route - transition, arrival, runway branch, feeder, final - and never the missed approach.
  • The approach page shows the approach the plan holds; that is where a briefing mismatch shows up.

The rest of Descent & Arrival

Background reading

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