LOWI Primer

About this Document

This document is intended as training and reference material for controlling Innsbruck Airport (LOWI). It covers the stations LOWI_DEL (rarely staffed, but theoretically), LOWI_TWR and LOWI_APP. This page is work in progress. Currently the DEL and TWR section is progress. Stay tuned for APP. If you are controller: Feel free to discuss and edit.

General

Location and peculiarities

Innsbruck is one of the most thrilling airports to fly from and to, for various reasons:

• It is deeply in the Inn valley, surrounded by mountains as high as 8000ft (to the north) and >10000ft (to the south and West). This means that approach is particularly long, and flying is limited to a narrow corridor.
• The runway is somehow not in line with the valley, so approach and takeoff is not straight-in-or-out. Instead, the last part of approach and the first part of departure is visual only.
• LOWI has peculiar wind conditions - "Föhn". This is a very strong and gusty wind descending from the mountains, blowing west to east through the valley. Under these conditions, aircraft usually perform a "special Föhn" departure and arrival to avoid vomiting passengers and heart attacks.
• The runway has no complete adjacent taxiways for entering and exiting - Departing (and sometimes arriving) aircraft need to backtrack on either side, which takes time and makes Tower controlling a real thrill.
• X-Plane 9 has LOWI as (nice) standard scenery, which provokes many X-Plane newbies to try out their skills here - thrilling experience for controllers, to be polite.