The Difference between Departing a Field with an Out of Service Instrument Approach compared to a Field without an Instrument Approach

As long as there is a departure alternate, Coast Guard policy permits pilots to depart from both a field with an out of service instrument approach and a field without an instrument approach. There is a big difference between these two types of fields. Since the field with an instrument approach, or multiple instrument approaches, has had IFR departures TERP’d out, if a standard departure cannot be accomplished, there will be a “trouble T” and/or ODP, whereas none of that work has been accomplished for a field without an instrument approach. As such, although there could be situations where an instrument departure is safe and appropriate in a variety of IFR conditions (e.g., you are intimately familiar with a field that has a runway that ends on the shoreline and permits an obstacle free climb over the ocean), there are certainly some other situations that would require a lot of chart study and in which an instrument departure in some IFR conditions would likely not be appropriate.