I read somewhere that some of the Galileo satellites were ready for launch...
As for the business model, anybody can see it's nonsense. The American GPS system is free and is more than accurate enough for just about any vehicle/ship/aircraft en route navigation requirement. As I go around a roundabout, TomTom3 tells me which bit of the roundabout I am on and where to turn off.
Commercial aviation uses mostly ILS and occassionally VOR or NDB based approaches so they don't need GPS approaches. In Europe, there may be a market on the fringes (e.g. Ryanair flying into some regional airport that doesn't have an NDB or VOR) but that's all it is.
Ultimately, that's why we have no GPS approaches in the UK. The airlines use ILS etc, small-field commercial ops can get special CAA permission for a private IAP based on some nearby navaid, and the bit of GA that would use GPS approaches is too small to make it worth while for an airfield to spend the money getting one approved.
There is sure to be a big market for GPS approaches in the emerging economies (e.g. I bet China is going to build a load of airports) but they will have no incentive to pay the Europeans when the American system is free.
The only way to make Galileo pay is to somehow force a whole load of present users of navigation systems to use it. For example, closing down instrument approaches and forcing the users to use Galileo instead. But a crazy plan like that could never be pulled off in international aviation.
Maybe I am missing something?
Last edited by IO540; 1st November 2005 at 14:56.