Stabilized Approach Criteria

Stabilized approach criteria are the most consequential go-around discipline in transport-category and serious GA operations. The Flight Safety Foundation's Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) Task Force in 1998-2000 established the original consensus criteria, and ICAO codified them in Doc 9870 with subsequent operator-specific implementation. The criteria define what "stabilized" means for a particular operator and aircraft, and impose a hard rule: if any criterion is not met by the gate altitude, the approach must be discontinued — go-around mandatory.

Typical industry-consensus criteria (operators tailor specific values): the aircraft is on the correct flight path; only minor adjustments to heading and pitch are needed to maintain the path; airspeed is no more than Vref + 20 knots and not less than Vref; the aircraft is in the correct landing configuration (gear down, flaps to landing setting); rate of descent is no greater than 1,000 ft/min (or 1,500 ft/min if briefed and acceptable); power setting is appropriate for the configuration and not below the published minimum; all briefings and checklists are completed.

The gate altitudes: 1,000 ft AAL (Above Aerodrome Level) for IMC approaches, 500 ft AAL for VMC approaches. By that altitude, all criteria must be met simultaneously. "Almost stabilized" is not stabilized — the rule is binary. Operators that grade go-around discipline strictly produce dramatically better runway-excursion and unstable-approach statistics; operators that accept "close enough" eventually produce the accident the criteria were written to prevent.

The operational implementation: the Pilot Monitoring is responsible for calling "unstable" if any criterion is unmet at the gate, which is the trigger for the Pilot Flying to execute go-around. Operators with mature Stabilized Approach SOPs publish specific phraseology, define the PM's calling responsibility explicitly, and audit Flight Data Monitoring (FDM/FOQA) data for unstable-approach events that did not result in go-arounds. Persistent gap between detected unstable approaches and executed go-arounds is a culture finding — pilots are continuing approaches they should have discontinued.

CBTA grading of stabilized-approach competency: the relevant observable behaviors sit under "Application of Procedures" (knowing and applying the criteria), "Problem Solving and Decision Making" (deciding to go around when the gate is failed), "Communication" (PM's unstable call), "Aircraft Flight Path Management — Manual Control" / "Automation" (achieving stabilized state by the gate). The assessment grades the discipline, not just the eventual landing.

For commercial training organizations, stabilized approach is the through-line from PPL training (where it's introduced as basic airmanship) to type rating training (where it's enforced as airline-grade SOP). Schools that grade stabilized-approach discipline rigorously produce cadets airline employers want; schools that don't produce graduates who require remediation in MCC or APS-MCC.

The FOQA / FDM data tells the operational truth. Operators with weak stabilized-approach culture see thousands of unstable-approach events per year continuing to landing without go-around. The data is the basis for safety management intervention: targeted recurrent training, line check audits, simulator scenarios designed to expose the cultural pattern. Without the data, the operator believes their stabilized-approach SOP is being followed; with the data, they know it isn't.

Aviatize's training management module structures stabilized-approach criteria as a graded element on every approach lesson. The OB-level grading captures the student's actual performance against the criteria at the gate altitude — not just whether the lesson concluded with a landing. Programme-wide aggregation surfaces students whose unstable-approach rate is elevated, instructors whose grading distributions diverge from peers, and curriculum points where stabilized-approach training intensifies.

For schools running airline-track integrated programs, the stabilized-approach data is exactly the evidence airline employers value — a documented, instructor-graded record showing the cadet has demonstrated stabilized-approach discipline consistently across hundreds of approaches in training, ready for line operations rather than requiring remediation in MCC.