Quote:
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Originally Posted by
Thomas Borchert wrote:
Bush, as bad as he is, would create major havoc with the U.S. air
carriers if he shut down the system.
The air carriers are not really major users of GPS, AFAIK.
Not so. Although the US air carrier fleet has less than 50% GPS
equippage, virutally all international flights are with GPS-equipped
aircraft.
And, some carriers, like ALaska, have GPS and the other goodies for
advanced RNP, performance-based instrument approach procedures. By
year's end KPSP will be added to the short list of new RNP SAAAR RNAV
IAPs (KDCA and KSUN already being published).
Starting next year the U.S. should see an additional 25 RNP SAAAR RNAV
IAPs each year.
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indeed - in addition, the capstone project (ADS-B) in Alaska (used prominently by commercial ops) requires GPS data to operate. NAT MNPS ops also specifies that a certified GPS can satisfy part of the minimum required equipment to navigate the north atlantic (at a much much lower cost than traditional inertial nav). while many of the older 737's that do the same 5 airport milkrun every day may still have conventional VHF nav equipment, new commercial aircraft and those navigating certain areas already depend on GPS for their daily ops.
IIRC, the number of US and Canadian LPV approaches is supposed to increase this year to over 500, a number of airports will benefit from much lower minimums with no additional ground-based nav equipment. i'm guessing that feeder airlines will increasingly equip themselves with lateral and vertical guidance GPS to reduce cancellations and improve service (and profitability).
francois