Monmouth Airport Deploys LPV Instrument Approaches

Rather than wait for the FAA to develop new instrument approach procedures at New Jersey’s Monmouth Executive Airport (KBLM), the airport operator arranged for their development. Using private funding, the KBLM team hired Flight Tech Engineering to survey the airport and approach surfaces and design two new LPV precision approaches. Flight Tech then presented the proposed procedures to the FAA, which reviewed and accepted them.

The new procedures provide lower decision altitudes than the existing nonprecision approaches to Runway 14 and 32, which have minimum descent altitudes of 500 feet msl (381 feet agl) and 560 feet msl (407 feet agl), respectively. Both LPV procedures have a decision altitude of 250 feet agl, with one-mile visibility, and provide vertical and lateral guidance.

According to airport officials, “These approaches give our aviators more choices and help us on our mission to make KBLM one of the safest privately owned, public-use airports in the [U.S.] Northeast.” The entire process took two years, and the FAA was helpful, they said.