Night Watch says:
On a side note..... in this day and age of very accurate long range navigation, it never stops amazing me when you are in the middle of nowhere (the polar tracks even) and another aircraft passes 1000' above or below. Everyone is on the same track to take advantage of the winds and in RVSM airspace it is impressive to see.
Night Watch, take a look at
this and
this link from the very early days of Pprune.
This subject was one of Pprune’s very early ‘crusades’, and I believe it played a small part in the recent introduction of ‘SLOPS’ (Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures) in Africa and most southern Asian countries.
Myself, I fly offset in the cruise everywhere where I’m not specifically forbidden to do so, (like RNP5 airspace), and I wish to God more people would do the same thing. However, even when flying in an area where SLOPS is permitted, it’s rare to see the aircraft on the reciprocal track NOT firmly on the centre of the airway.
It would seem that the vast majority of airline pilots are trusting of technology to an extreme degree or lack imagination as to what the result of one mistake would be.
The problem has become even more apparent since we’ve introduced RVSM, particularly where you’re transitioning from RVSM to non-RVSM airspace.