Keef – I think the situation is somewhat more complex. We obviously don’t know anything about the background or experience of your cross channel flyer other than he sounded “on the ragged edge”. Now we might speculate that he was new to cross channel flying and to having no visual clues to help him. You mention there was some thin stratus. At the best of times cross channel you often find yourself on instruments because of the lack of visual clues, and with some stratus about maybe the viz. below was not great. So our cross channel flyer may have had some basic aircraft handling issues. Maybe he now adds to that in the back of his mind not being certain whether he is maintaining an accurate heading (you add “he was at a different height and going in a different direction”). It seems to me with a moving map GPS a quick glance would alleviate one worry (where he was in relation to the French coast) and would give him a line to follow if he had set up a route before leaving his home airfield.
Now a 430 does have a few buttons to press and to do so would provide a potentially dangerous distraction to our channel flyer BUT surely the panel of most light aircraft have plenty of other buttons to play with if you must in the same way to use the car analogy you might want to tune the radio, select cruise control and use your hand held ‘phone on the motorway whilst driving in fog! As I said in my previous post learning what the buttons do on your panel any more than the buttons on your GPS in the air would seem to be verging on the reckless UNLESS you are completely on top of the situation. Fortunately however we live in a world of largely free choice and if you really want to do that it is a matter for you in spite of having had it drummed into you during training that you fly the aircraft first and foremost. In short, I think we need to be careful that our argument doesn’t become one of well we had better not give the pilot the ability in the cockpit to do x and y and z because it might become all too distracting for the poor fellow. The fact remains that pilots are operating in complex environment and need to have the tools to make it as easy for them as possible. In my opinion the key is to teach the pilot not to become totally reliant on any one instrument and to shed distractions when he is becoming overwhelmed. Surely that MUST be part of good pilot training and in that regard a GPS is no different from any other instrument we have in the cockpit other than (imho) this ridiculous obsession some have that it shouldn’t be there!
I wonder whether at the time stabilised compass gyros where being installed in cockpits there were those who said they should be banned. The mark 1 brigade will doubtless agree you can still navigate perfectly well with a map, pencil and magnetic compass and a gyros compass can and will go wrong ( in my experience more often than the GPS).
My point is that had our hapless channel flyer had a GPS the odd occasional glance might have eliminated one other worry from the back of his mind. Had the GPS gone wrong he would have been back to flying the track he had laid on his map before he set out so he would have been no worse off.