In France, if you fly a visual approach, you need to fly the same procedures as if you were VFR.
Stephan_Schwab wrote:
So I rather join at pattern altitude from the side.
You are right, actually you have to join at the beginning of downwind at pattern altitude. Joining downwind from above is not allowed in France. So that was not a good suggestion. Tough one when you are basically dumped overhead the field at 6000’ AGL.
boscomantico wrote:
In France, if you fly a visual approach, you need to fly the same procedures as if you were VFR.
Sure but you don’t need to cancel IFR do you?
No, of course not.
JasonC wrote:
You know that if you are executing a visual approach you don’t cancel IFR? It is an IFR approach. Now maybe you wanted a VFR join but…
I know.
I just said those words just in case and I believe they got ignored anyway.
As I was trying to show and explain with the picture at the beginning, my main issue here was that I got held high and then basically dumped almost overhead the field. I believe I got out of this clean but it left a question mark on my face.
Maybe there was an expectation of the ATCO that I will be going down at a high rate like 2000ft/min and that way make it to the beginning of the downwind. I don’t like these deep dives and try to not go beyond 1000ft/min.
boscomantico wrote:
In France, if you fly a visual approach, you need to fly the same procedures as if you were VFR.
Which is a good thing. I didn’t know that it is explicitly stated. It seems to be common sense and that’s what I did.
Visual approaches can be a little circuitous. 
Apparently so :-)
Stephan_Schwab wrote:
boscomantico wrote:
In France, if you fly a visual approach, you need to fly the same procedures as if you were VFR.
Which is a good thing. I didn’t know that it is explicitly stated. It seems to be common sense and that’s what I did.
Why is that a good thing? To me it seems lika a PITA. VFR approach procedures typically require you to pass certain reporting points at low altitude. There is absolutely no reason why you should be doing that on a visual approach – you are IFR all the time and in controlled airspace ATC is still responsible for separation. Try asking a 777 to follow VFR procedures on a visual approach!
Airborne_Again wrote:
Try asking a 777 to follow VFR procedures on a visual approach!
Don’t know about 777, but Airbusses do that all the time, for example the KEREN visual approach into LLBG. That seems to be the most common approach into LLBG. My PPL FI flew it once when I was in the back, he said it was certainly more demanding than a normal ILS, but quite doable (obviously).
That’s not a VFR procedure. And the arrival starts at 5000’ with almost 5 NM between RNAV points.
