Definition
A navigational course flown by an aircraft for the purpose of intercepting and joining a desired track or airway, typically a published route, radial, or final approach course. The aircraft flies a heading angled toward the target track until it reaches and turns onto it.
Plain English
A flight path you fly to meet up with the route you actually want to be on. You aim toward the route at an angle, and once you reach it you turn and follow it.
Context Anchor
Seen in instrument procedure coding, advanced navigator databases, and discussions of how a panel navigator moves from one course segment to the next.
Derivation
Course comes from an older word meaning “a running or path.” Intercept comes from Latin roots meaning “to take or catch between.” Together, the term means following one path until it catches or meets another path.
Why Pilots Care
Allows efficient joining of a route without overshooting or flying extra distance.
Analogy
It is like driving straight along one road until it crosses another road you need to join. The important point is where the roads meet, not a separate destination along the way.
Intuition Check
Do not read “intercept” as a named destination. Here it means the point where your current course meets another defined path.
Example Sentence 1
ATC assigned a heading of 040 as a course-to-an-intercept for the localizer.
Example Sentence 2
ATC gave us a course to an intercept of the ILS localizer ten miles from the outer marker.