Surely this should be a debate of the pilots refusal to see an abnormality in the approach, the blind belief in his instruments that worked well enough in the earlier flights? GPS is a brilliant tool, it can guide a tomahawk (not a PA38, the missile version
) into your front room via the toilet window if they should so wish. Now if the Mil place enough trust in the system to that degree, then i think you should accept it will get you to within a few hundred meters of a touchdown zone in pretty much the right place. The good old fashion WWII stuff does indeed work. But you have to scoot around the sky to follow the routes they prescribe and the kit in the plane needs regular health checks to make sure it tells the truth!!!!! I have seen many differences in various vor readings in different planes, as much as 10deg! Without in In/Opp sticker in sight. Use
ALL tools available to you, why would you do otherwise? But as i said earlier, surely this is more a question of why the pilots took so long to realise things weren't right? CRM, Get homeitis, etc etc, all of these and probably more factors were the cause, not the lack of GPS or the old wartime stuff! It sounds simmilar to something we teach in the Advanced Motoring Course, most accidents happen within a mile or so of the begining or end of your journey. This is because you know the area intimately and your mind wonders to events that are likely to happen once you have parked up, and you take your eye off the all important ball. And when starting your journey your mind is filled with things like nav, purpose of journey and you are monitoring the vehicle to make sure all is well.
Think of a Ryanair pilot who has done 3 sectors and is on his fourth into his home base, not a hitch all day and he is faced with the scenario in the video, i think the same situation could be very likely?
However it was a very helpfull video that explained something i have often pondered. Does anyone know if the localiser works in the same way only in the horizontal plane?