What That Symbol on the Plate Actually Means, and Why Boldmethod's Approach Chart Quiz Is Worth Your Time
Learn what approach chart symbols really mean - from the Maltese cross to terrain shading - and why Boldmethod's quiz is worth your time.
Every mark on an instrument approach plate - the barbed lines, black triangles, and numbers stacked in boxes - is communicating critical safety information, and the symbols pilots skip over are the ones most likely to cause trouble at minimums. Boldmethod recently released a short video quiz asking pilots to identify a single piece of approach chart symbology, and while the quiz itself is simple, it points to a bigger truth: instrument charts are a language most pilots learned just well enough to pass a checkride, then stopped studying. Going back to read the parts you’ve tuned out is one of the highest-value refreshers you can do.
Why Approach Chart Symbology Still Matters
Instrument charts are a language, not a picture. Most pilots read the fixes they need, check the minimums, and brief the missed approach - and everything else on the plate becomes background noise.
That’s a problem, because the symbols you skip are the ones that bite on a bad night in the clouds. The Boldmethod quiz is a nudge to actually read the parts you’ve been ignoring.
Recognition is not the same as knowledge. You can look at an approach plate a thousand times and recognize its general shape without ever truly reading it.
What Does the Maltese Cross Mean on an Approach Plate?
The Maltese cross on the profile view of a non-precision approach marks the final approach fix (FAF). It’s where your final descent begins and the point at which you’re cleared down to your minimum descent altitude (MDA).
Here’s what trips people up: on an approach with a glideslope, such as an ILS, the final approach fix is not the Maltese cross. It’s the lightning bolt symbol, which marks the point where you intercept the glideslope at the published altitude.
The same plate can show both, and they mean different things depending on which approach you’re flying. Brief the wrong one, and your descent profile is wrong before you ever break out.
Reading the Missed Approach Track
The feathered arrow on the profile view represents the missed approach track - a climbing dashed line with segmented instructions such as “climb to 2,000, then climbing left turn to 3,000 direct to a fix, hold.”
That sequence is simple to read on the ground with a cup of coffee. It’s a very different task when you’re single-pilot, hand-flying, the airplane is accelerating and pitching up, and the tower is talking.
The moment you go missed is not the moment to learn the symbology - it’s the moment to already know it cold.
Understanding Terrain and Obstacle Symbols
The little black triangle with a number next to it marks an obstacle, and the number is its top altitude in feet above mean sea level (MSL). Obstacles with a dot underneath are marked differently than those without.
When a chart shades the terrain - when Jeppesen or a government plate adds gradients and contour tints - that is the chart shouting at you. It’s telling you the ground is high and it’s close.
Many controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents happened over charts that were quietly warning about exactly the ridge the airplane hit. If you fly into mountainous or high-terrain airports, those shaded reliefs and spot elevations aren’t decoration - they’re the difference between a stabilized approach and a very bad surprise.
Decoding the Numbers in the Minimums Boxes
The minimums section at the bottom of the plate holds several distinctions worth knowing cold:
- The difference between a straight-in landing minimum and a circling minimum.
- How visibility is expressed - sometimes in statute miles, sometimes as runway visual range (RVR) given in hundreds of feet.
When a plate says RVR 24, that means 2,400 feet of visibility down the runway - not “24” of anything you can eyeball from the cockpit. Get that unit wrong in your head and you’ll either bust a minimum or throw away a perfectly legal approach.
What Do the T and A Triangle Symbols Mean?
The “T” in a triangle signals non-standard takeoff minimums, and the “A” in a triangle signals non-standard alternate minimums. Both tell you the airport has non-standard rules published somewhere else in the book.
Miss that little triangle and you might plan an alternate the regulations don’t actually allow you to use. That’s a paperwork violation hiding behind a symbol smaller than your fingernail.
How Digital Charts Change the Way You Read Symbols
Most pilots no longer carry paper. We read plates on a tablet through ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot, or the FAA’s own digital products - and a digital chart is not a photograph of the paper chart. The symbology is the same, but layering, decluttering, and georeferencing all change how you interact with the picture.
When you can pinch, zoom, and toggle layers, it’s easy to declutter away the very obstacle or note that mattered. The symbol is still in the source data; you just told your app to hide it.
The georeferenced ownship - your airplane symbol placed right on the approach track - is a gift, but it’s also a crutch. It can let a pilot stop reading the plate and start just watching the dot. When the dot and the symbology disagree, you need to know the symbology well enough to catch it.
Why This Matters Now: Charts Are Still Evolving
The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) continues to refine these charts - standardizing briefing strips, adjusting plan-view and profile-view layouts, and aligning U.S. charts with international symbology so a pilot arriving from overseas reads the same picture we do.
None of this changes the fundamentals. A Maltese cross is still a final approach fix. But the plate you shoot next year may look a little different from the one you learned on, and the only defense against that is fluency in the underlying language.
How to Actually Sharpen Your Chart-Reading Skills
Here’s a practical plan to turn the quiz into real proficiency:
- Take the Boldmethod quiz. It’s short - less time than preflighting the airplane - but don’t stop at getting the one answer right.
- Read an approach you know well. Pull up an approach you fly all the time and name every symbol out loud: every line, every triangle, every number in every box. The ones you hesitate on are your homework.
- Brief an unfamiliar approach cold. Pull up an approach into an airport you’ve never flown - somewhere with terrain and a non-standard note - and brief it as if you’re going there tomorrow in actual conditions. Better to miss something in your living room than at minimums.
- Use it as a teaching tool. If you’re a CFII, cover the answer, show your student the symbol, and make them commit. There’s real value in forcing a pilot to say what they actually know versus what they assumed they knew.
The chart designers packed decades of hard-won safety information into that symbology - terrain that killed people, obstacles that clipped wings, descent gradients that put airplanes into the ground short of the runway. Every symbol was earned. The least we can do is learn to read them.
Key Takeaways
- The Maltese cross marks the final approach fix on a non-precision approach, but on an ILS the final approach fix is the lightning bolt (glideslope intercept) - brief the wrong one and your descent profile is off from the start.
- RVR 24 means 2,400 feet of runway visual range, not 24 of anything - unit confusion can cause you to bust or needlessly abandon an approach.
- The “T” and “A” triangles flag non-standard takeoff and alternate minimums published elsewhere in the book; missing them invites a regulatory violation.
- Shaded terrain and black-triangle obstacle symbols are direct warnings about high, close terrain - key defenses against CFIT accidents.
- Digital charts make it easy to declutter away critical symbols or over-rely on the georeferenced ownship; strong symbology knowledge keeps you honest when the dot and the plate disagree.
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