Transitions for LAX arrivals

[Anthony Atkielski 985811]

Not so long ago, many of the arrivals into LAX from the east included an extra page that showed the fixes at which aircraft could turn from the arrival route onto the approaches for each runway. For example, these plates allowed you to see that MINZA was the appropriate fix to transition from a CIVET or RIIVR arrival onto the approach for 24R. Now those handy pages seem to be gone, and the regular pages for these STARs don't indicate fixes that can be used to transition to the arrivals.

 

How am I supposed to figure out the transitions now? I used to look at the plates after being [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned a runway so that I could find which fix to add to my route to turn at the right point, but now I don't know what to do.

[Mike Cassel 849958]

Not so long ago, many of the arrivals into LAX from the east included an extra page that showed the fixes at which aircraft could turn from the arrival route onto the approaches for each runway. For example, these plates allowed you to see that MINZA was the appropriate fix to transition from a CIVET or RIIVR arrival onto the approach for 24R. Now those handy pages seem to be gone, and the regular pages for these STARs don't indicate fixes that can be used to transition to the arrivals.

 

How am I supposed to figure out the transitions now? I used to look at the plates after being [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igned a runway so that I could find which fix to add to my route to turn at the right point, but now I don't know what to do.

 

Anthony,

 

They moved the "runway transitions" from the STAR chart to the IAP charts when the RIIVR2/SEAVU2/OLDEE1 came out recently. The reason for that was that FMCs had difficulty with the previous style of runway transitions.

 

As an example of this, here is the ILS chart for runway 24R:

 

http://laartcc.org/charts/00237IL24R.PDF

 

And here is the RIIVR2 arrival,

 

http://laartcc.org/arrivals/00237RIIVR.PDF

 

As you can see, RIIVR is now an initial approach fix for runway 24R, and the arrival terminates at RIIVR. RIIVR and SEAVU are now IAFs for all 4 runways, so the procedure is very similar for all of the ILS approaches.

 

Accordingly, most of us at ZLA are using the phraseology "descend via the RIIVR2/SEAVU2/OLDEE1 arrival, then cleared ILS runway XX approach." There are a few acceptable variations on that theme depending on the circomestances, but now RIIVR and SEAVU are IAFs like any other IAF really, its just a rather long approach procedure.

[Anthony Atkielski 985811]

Okay, I'll look at the approach plates in more detail. I just tried the latest cycle of STARs for the PMDG and it seemed to get all messed up when I tried to select SEAVU2 and ILS 24R; the Level D set of procedures seemed to work better (although they are both from Terry, so I'd expect them to be identical).

 

Previously I always inserted a transition by hand once I had the runway, probably because the FMC had trouble with it (but I've been doing it for so long that I don't really remember why).