Garmin expanded its Guided Visual Approaches database on Thursday, adding 18 new procedures across 13 airports for pilots flying into terrain-constrained runways. The update, built with instrument-procedure designer Hughes Aerospace, pushes the total library to 64 visual approaches spanning 48 airports, including Las Vegas' McCarran (KLAS), Oakland (KOAK), and Chicago's DuPage (KDPA), according to Garmin.
Guided Visual Approaches give lateral and vertical guidance for the kind of visual approach that traditional instrument procedures don't cover, the routes into airports boxed in by mountains, city lights, or crowded airspace where staying lined up with the runway by eye alone gets harder in a fast turbine aircraft. Garmin built the feature to feel identical to a standard instrument approach: pilots load a Guided Visual the same way, fly it coupled to the autopilot, and brief it from a georeferenced FliteChart rather than a paper plate. That familiarity is the pitch. A procedure that behaves like everything else in the flight deck is one crews are far more likely to actually fly rather than default back to raw visual maneuvering.
The approaches work with WAAS-equipped Garmin avionics capable of RF legs, including the GTN and GTN Xi navigator series and select integrated flight decks, and are sold through flyGarmin.com either individually or bundled into Garmin's OnePak database subscription. Pilots need to confirm their aircraft's operating handbook actually clears it for RNP procedures with radius-to-fix legs before buying in, since not every WAAS box qualifies just because it's WAAS-equipped.
Garmin also folded the charts into its Garmin Pilot mobile app for Apple devices, letting pilots pull up a Guided Visual FliteChart and load it into a flight plan alongside standard approach types, provided they're carrying both a Garmin Pilot Premium subscription and the Guided Visuals database add-on. It's the kind of incremental database release Garmin ships every few months rather than a headline product launch, but for operators flying into the specific airports on this list, it's a meaningful expansion of which runways now get a stabilized, autopilot-coupled way in.
