I totally agree with what most say here, that in order to develop good SA you have to have a quality picture of your environment, position, flightpath and aircraft status. No question.
I don't believe that the story of SA ends with just acquiring it, by doing so you're no longer simply reacting to events but predicting them. The highest level of SA has you not just predicting events but doing something about them too, mitigating the possible negative effects, developing alternative plans and remaining flexible.
With regards to that old chestnut, the GPS. Predictably I disagree that GPS = SA. Competence + GPS ~= SA as Competence + Traditional Navigation ~= SA.
BA did a study a decade ago on glass systems. They concluded that SA was no higher with crew operating EFIS aircraft compared to crew operating conventional instruments. Having gain a considerable number of hours since my last reading, I decided to recently re-read the report. As a result it does somewhat concur with my own experience. To quote a bit of it:
Firstly, rushed approaches were occurring as frequently in Glass and Steam fleets despite the extra information on display in the Glass cockpit. Secondly, significantly more hard GPWS warnings were occurring on the Glass fleets and, finally, whilst more navigation errors were occurring on the ‘Steam’ fleets these were mostly recognised and corrected immediately whereas more consequential navigation errors were occurring on the Glass fleets. On inspection the HFR database supported their concerns. Using the ‘percentage positive’ calculation for each of the three SA factors and comparing across the combined Glass and combined Steam fleets gave a very clear indication that Flight Operations were right to be concerned.
Obviously it isn't entirely relevant to GA, but some of the insights should prove interesting. Report
here.
I fear that the training issue is another discussion!