Its nonsense isn't it? I can't remember the precise rule but I'm fairly sure that large civil aircraft can't be certificated for passenger ops if they rely solely on GPS. GPS can be switched off and the US will do it if it suits them.
Replies
My understanding is that commercial airplanes have 3 redundant independent nav systems. GPS, internal gyroscopes and the like, and ground-based nav like b4 GPS.
sep 1, 2025, 8:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Inertial Navigation (with lots of redundancy) is the usual baseline supplemented by varieties of direction finding/navaids. Additionally in Europe there's great Air Traffic Control; the competence of Pilots is tiptop.
sep 1, 2025, 8:43 pm • 2 0 • view
I worked with pointy jets. One of the older ones at the works used to land with a dead cockpit for 1/3 of its flights - the hardware was that bad. By contrast, GPS was so good the signal was artificially degraded for most users. All users get the precision variety now (until they don't).
sep 1, 2025, 8:43 pm • 1 0 • view