Originally Posted by
RedHeadFlyer
What about those red plastic plaques with white lettering I saw in the CRJ cockpits that says "ILS Cat I" (or category, can't recall)? Was that just something permanently INOP on that plane? I've seen that sign in multiple cockpits, but my sample size is small at 4. I also haven't been in RJs to/from SFO, only DEN or ORD.
And welcome to flyertalk - cool to have you on!
Let me entertain this for a second. There are two possible scenarios that I can think of for this. MX guys (if there are any here) can expand on them:
1) If it's a permenant placard in the aircraft, then to me, that signifies that this particular aircraft did not meet the standard equipment for that particular airline (i.e., it was bought second hand from a CAT I only airline, and the purchasing airline did not have the parts to bring it up its own standard equipment before putting the aircraft online) so the placard exists to notify the crew the it can only do cat I approaches.
2) It could read something along the lines of "Cat II (or III) Certified" which is required for the aircraft to shoot a higher category of approach, and you could have simply mis-read it.
If the particular equipment required for a CAT II (or higher) approach was INOP, then a temporary placard written by the crew would be there somewhere to declare this fact.