Standard instrument departure (SID) routes, also known as departure procedures (DP) are published flight procedures followed by aircraft on an IFR flight plan immediately after take-off from an airport.
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A SID is an air traffic control coded departure procedure that has been established at certain airports to simplify clearance delivery procedures. SIDs are supposed to be easy to understand and if possible limited to one page.
Although a SID will keep aircraft away from terrain, it is optimized for ATC route of flight and will not always provide the lowest climb gradient. It strikes a balance between terrain and obstacle avoidance, noise abatement (if necessary) and airspace management considerations. In order to legally fly a SID the pilot must possess at least the current version of the SID's textual description . SIDs in the USA are created either by the military (USAF or USN) or by the FAA (which includes US Army Fields). The main difference between US military and civilian SIDs is that military SIDs depict obstacles, ATC climb gradients, and obstacle climb gradients while civilian SIDs depict only minimum obstacle climb gradients.[1]
There are two main types of SIDs: Pilot-Nav SIDs and Vector SIDs.
A Pilot-Nav SID is a SID where the pilot is primarily responsible for navigation along the SID route. They are established for airports where terrain and related safety factors dictate a specific ground track be flown.
A Vector SID is used where ATC can provide radar navigational guidance to a filed/assigned route or to a fix depicted on a SID. Flying a Vector SID may require flying an ODP (Obstacle Departure Procedure) first. This is usually annotated in the ODP section stating, "Fly runway heading to xxx prior to making any turns." Vector SIDs give ATC more control over air traffic routing than do Pilot-Nav SIDs.[1]
Air traffic control clearance must be received prior to flying a SID.[2] A SID clearance is issued to the pilot based on a combination of the destination, the first waypoint in the flight plan, and the take-off runway used.
A standard instrument departure procedure consists of a number of waypoints or fixes, which may either be given by their geographical coordinates, or which may be defined by radio beacons such as VOR or NDB and radial headings, or a radial heading with a DME distance. It also includes a climb profile, instructing the pilot to cross certain points at or above a certain altitude. A SID procedure ends at a waypoint lying on an airway which the pilot will follow from there.
SID procedures are defined by the local authorities (governments, airports and air traffic control organizations) to ensure safety and expedite handling of departing traffic and - when possible - to minimize the amount of noise over inhabited areas such as cities.
Naming conventions for SID procedures vary by region.
In most of Europe, SID procedures are usually named after the final waypoint (fix) of the procedure, which often lies on an airway, followed optionally by a version number and often a single letter. The version number starts at 1 and is increased each time the procedure is altered. The letter designates the runway (the route to be flown to a particular fix depends on the take-off runway).
In the United States, SID procedure names are less rigidly formatted, and may simply refer to some notable characteristic of the procedure, a waypoint, or its geographical situation, along with a single digit that is incremented with each revision of the procedure. Thus, the LOOP5 SID at Los Angeles International Airport was so called because it was the fifth revision of a procedure that required aircraft to take off towards the west, over the ocean, and then make a roughly 180-degree turn back towards the mainland (a loop, in other words).
Though SID procedures are primarily designed for IFR traffic to join airways, air traffic control at busy airports can request that VFR traffic also follows such a procedure so that aircraft separation can be more easily maintained. Usually VFR pilots will be given radar vectors corresponding to the SID lateral route with different altitude restrictions.
Pilots must follow the published SID route. Small deviations are allowed (usually there are flight paths of some kilometers wide) but bigger deviations may cause separation conflicts. Pilots can be fined for too large deviations from the prescribed path.
The precision of SIDs also varies by region. In some countries and regions, every detail of the lateral and vertical flight path to be followed is specified exactly in the SID; in other areas, the SID may be much more general, with details being left either to pilot discretion or to ATC. In general, however, SIDs are quite detailed.
As of 21 October 2010, there were 7 published SIDs from runway 22 at Amsterdam airport Schiphol, The Netherlands (see chart AD 2.EHAM-SID-22).
Among them, the ANDIK2G Standard Instrument Departure [3] for reaching the ANDIK waypoint northeast of Amsterdam read as follows: [note 1]
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