In article et,
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"Ron Garret" wrote in message
...

It does if you're out of radar coverage.


You're not going to be out of radar coverage. Haven't you been paying
attention? Routes off-airways or beyond normal navaid usable distances
require ATC to provide radar monitoring and course guidance if necessary.

shrug So make the scenario on-airway. Or have the radar fail. Or
have the controller not paying attention. Or have the pilot file /G.
There are myriad possibilities.

I just identified one. I identified another in another branch of this
this thread.


You identified what you erroneously believed to be risks. You didn't
identify any actual risks.

Yes I did, though as I suspected it hasn't done any good. You seem to
have a different definition of "risk" than most people.

If handheld GPS is not a risk then neither is AI failure. The two
differ only in their likelihoods; structurally the two situations are
identical. Both GPS and the AI provide information that can be wrong.
Both have backups that are supposed to kick in if the information is in
fact wrong. In both cases the backups can fail, or the pilot can fail
to use them properly. And in both cases if the pilot does realize that
the information is wrong and act accordingly the results can be
catastrophic. Does that constitute a risk? I think most people would
say yes. (We could take a poll.)

(There is actually one structural difference, and that is that the GPS
might not be rigidly attached to the airframe, whereas the AI
necessarily is. But that's just an additional source of risk for the
GPS in most cases.)

BTW, just because the risks are numerous does not mean that they are
significant. (But just because they are not significant does not mean
that they do not exist.)


Numerous risks? You cited only two, and they weren't actually risks.

I stopped at two because extrapolating from those two examples to many
others is an elementary exercise in applying some imagination (which you
seem to lack). Also because, as I suspected, it would be futile.
Additional examples will not convince you. You will simply dismiss them
as not being risks.

Because you can't decide to stop using your VORs and use your GPS
instead if you do not have a GPS. Isn't that obvious?


But I can complacently decide to stop using my VORs if I'm on a long-range
vector. Isn't that similarity obvious?

Of course. But that is, as you yourself are so fond of pointing out,
not the topic under discussion. That there are many different possible
root causes of a catastrophic chain of events does not reduce the risk
associated with any one of those root causes. The risk associated with
AI failure is not reduced just because there are also other ways one
might get disoriented. Likewise for GPS.

You are using up your quota of stupid questions.


Do you realize you haven't answered any of my questions correctly?

No. Do you realize that that was another stupid question?

rg