GPS PPL Syllabus

[IO540]

I agree.

However I am very negative about the chances of anything happening. Too many vested interests.

The Ontrack report (which incidentally I think is a poor piece of statistics; a lot of the categories of causes are highly unprofessional) states that of the infringements surveyed only 18% were using a moving map GPS. The report's writers even bravely suggest that GPS should be included in the PPL. Yet, all the official farts at the top of this game keep saying that as many people with GPS as without are busting airspace, even saying that the rising infringments demonstrates GPS mis-use.

As for improving nav generally, the training industry isn't going to go for that because they don't want a more expensive PPL. They would fiercely resist the obvious (and IMV the most useful) piece of progress: mandatory panel mount GPS installation. Then there is the pretence that if you teach dead reckoning properly, and ram it down peoples' throats with a hammer, GPS will quietly go away....

I actually think that if aviation was invented today, nobody would come up with the stupid slide rule, and the whole edifice propping up dead reckoning. The logical way to navigate a plane is fully IFR. Plot a route on a computer, load it into a GPS, and follow the GPS track. That's how instrument pilots do it, but the "VFR" bit of GA is a separate army fighting its own battle.

It's interesting to look at how the FAA approaches this. You can do your PPL (or the IR) in a really basic plane. They can't stop you. But if you turn up for a checkride in a C172 with an autopilot and a GNS430, the examiner will expect you to know how to use the AP, and how to use the 430 for basic nav (or for flying a GPS approach if it's an IR checkride). So, somebody who is determined to be a luddite can just make sure they pick a school that has only basic planes.

So, not even the FAA have put GPS into the syllabus. They have side-stepped the issue of flying school opposition by insisting on equipment knowledge on the checkride, and they know that customer pressure will gradually make schools install the equipment. This is not something that could be done here in the UK, where most punters are skint so the market is fiercely price sensitive. Here, it would work only on owner pilots but they usually have their licenses already.

And if anybody would like to, I am sure the FAA would. The USA has a bit of a problem with wealthy pilots buying nice new planes (definitely not a problem in the UK) with avionics they don't understand. Here in the UK it's just the same (harder in fact because so few instructors know anything about the stuff) but the pilot numbers are far too small to show up.

Finally, is the CAA still in this business? I know EASA have not yet taken over FCL but perhaps it is only through EASA that anything might happen.