PANS-OPS


PANS-OPS is an air traffic control acronym which stands for Procedures for Air Navigation Services – Aircraft OPerationS. PANS-OPS are rules for designing instrument approach and departure procedures. Such procedures are used to allow aircraft to land and take off when instrument meteorological conditions impose instrument flight rules.

ICAO rules

The Flight Safety section of International Civil Aviation Organization is responsible for PANS-OPS, which outlines the principles for airspace protection and procedure design to which all ICAO signatory states must adhere. The regulatory material surrounding PANS-OPS may vary from country to country.

Handling of obstacles

Chapter 4 of Annex 14 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation " a series of obstacle limitation surfaces that define the limits to which objects may project into the airspace" surrounding an aerodrome. PANS-OPS defines "protection surfaces" which are imaginary surfaces in space that guarantee an aircraft a certain minimum obstacle clearance, similar to the purpose of obstacle limitation surfaces in Annex 14. These surfaces may be used as a tool for local governments in assessing building development. Where buildings may be permitted to penetrate the OLS, they cannot be permitted to penetrate any PANS-OPS surface, because the purpose of these surfaces is to guarantee pilots operating under IMC a descent path free of obstacles for a given approach.

Other PANS

In 1989 the very first commercially available off the shelf instrument procedure design software conforming to ICAO document 8168 Pans-Ops was programmed. This software was first demonstrated at Bailbrook College in Bath, England in 1992 to a procedure design course. Prior to this all procedure design was done with pencil, tracing paper and a calculator. The software was programmed on a 386 IBM laptop computer and written in the “LISP” programming language.