Anatomy of an approach plate

Every approach plate, whether Jeppesen or government-style, answers the same questions in the same order: Where am I? What do I fly? How low may I go? What if it goes wrong? Once you know the layout, you can brief any approach in under two minutes.

All five examples below come from the same chart — the real Frankfurt ILS 07C plate from the German AIP .

The top band: who published the chart, its document index and the effective date. "AD 2 EDDF 4-2-9" is the chart's address in the AIP — aerodrome section (AD 2), airport EDDF, page 4-2-9. Jeppesen plates also put the airport name and procedure title up here; on AIP plates those sit one band lower, inside the briefing strip .

The most important strip on the page: airport name and procedure title, the frequency table, airport elevation and magnetic variation — everything you set up before the first fix . On AIP plates the approach navaid box (ILS frequency, identifier, course) sits just below at the top of the plan view ; Jeppesen keeps it inside the strip.

The approach seen from above: the final course, fixes with their altitudes, feeder routes, the missed-approach track, holding patterns, terrain elevations and the MSA circle around the navaid. This is the map you fly.

The same approach from the side: level at 4,000 ft until the final approach point , then down the 3.0° glide path to the threshold. The missed-approach instruction is printed where the profile ends — the procedure you fly if the runway never appears.

The bottom line, literally: how low you may descend, per aircraft category and per climb gradient , with the required visibility. OCA vs DA and the VM (C) row are decoded in Altitudes and minima .

Pilots read the plate in a fixed order: title → frequencies → navaid and course → minimums → plan view (fixes and altitudes) → profile → missed approach procedure. The Chart Explorer on this site walks you through exactly this flow on annotated real plates — and the symbols inside the plan view get their own article: Symbols and abbreviations .