Aviation Theory

INTRODUCTION

Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR) Charts are designed to expedite ATC arrival procedures and to facilitate transition between enroute and instrument approach operations. They present the pilot a pre planned IFR ATC arrival procedure in graphic and textual form. Each STAR procedure is presented as a separate chart and may serve a single airport or more than one airport in a given geographic location. To accept a STAR, you must have at least a textual description. A STAR has many similarities to the SID and is presented in a similar format. Please see the lesson on SIDs for specific chart info.

STAR CHARTS

Below is the Bradford Three Arrival for Chicago O'Hare (larger image..)

If you are going through the lessons in order, you may have noticed that the St. Louis SID, Cards Four, Bradford Transition and the Chicago STAR Bradford Three share the Bradford VORTAC. This means that if flying from St. Louis to Chicago, the flight plan could actually be composed of the departure airport, a SID, a STAR, and arrival airport or as written on the flight plan: STL - CARDS4.BDF - BDF.BDF3 - ORD.  I'll leave it to you to figure out what would be required if you didn't have the SIDs and STARs, but it is certainly a LOT longer! As you can see, SIDs and STARs can greatly decrease the workload of both pilots and controllers.