Snowbird wrote:

wrote in message ...
The Customer Suffers wrote:
I'd expect prices to soon go thru the roof, now that they have the
monopoly over the aviation GPS market.

I think you meant to say light aircraft GPS market. No high end biz
jets or airliners have Garmin equipment. Compared to what the big boys
use, the Garmin 530 is a stubborn toy.

So, what do the "high end biz jets" use?

Per acquaintance flying Falcons w/ airline pilot friends,
his equipment was far better than theirs. Judging from
what I'd seen peeking through cockpit doors, would have
to agree.

No doubt, there are more state-of-the-art biz jets than there are airliners.
Two high-end airliners that come to mind are the 777 and latest 737.

But, even the "so so" airliners are legions ahead of light aircraft.

The best avionics suite today would include:

1. Triple IRUs as the primary position and attitude platform.
2. Dual FMS/LNAV-VNAV systems with augmentation of the IRU mixed postion
sensor in order of perference: GPS, DME/DME, and way down the list, VOR/DME.
Many of these aircraft have scanning DMEs that can "see" up to 10 DME stations
virtually at the same time.
3.Dual, independent navdatabases, with acess to airways and jet routes by
typing in flight-plan sequence logic; i.e., LAX.LOOP1.DAG.J134.STL
4. Autoflight system, with dual, independent, stall protected autothrottles
systems, and capability to fly RF legs (radius-to-fix legs). Dual,
independent flight directors.
5. EVS.
6. Electronic flight bag, including approach charts and aircraft handbook.