I think a customer who pays almost €30 for a minute of helicopter time is entitled to a no BS direct line flight wherever possible.
Customers have stopwatches nowadays and they have learned how to multiply.
Got to agree with you on this point GoodGrief...
With technology being what it is TODAY, why people don't use it, God only knows... Sure, check the compass and set the DI/VOR/NDB, but like you say, every minute counts. If it isn't a customer, it's the boss counting every second you're off course
Can't say I've drawn my own maps while flying across some God foresaken african country but, I have added a few things as we went by. Luckily, my flying time in africa wasn't before fire was discovered (
sorry SAS).
I've done quite a few long ferry trips acrross the dark continent, always with 2 gps', maps in a folder, and my trusty Jepp hi/low as a reference along the way.
We had an ex mil guy who did the trip, old school style on maps, as he didn't trust gps, and needless to say, his flight time was quite a bit more than the gps pilots...and needless to say, the boss wasn't too happy with that extra flight time, which meant he wasn't on the roster again.
Nowadays, it's all about saving time and money, and not building hours.
Most of my ferries are catching winds at high altitude (up to 10000) and saving the $$$$, and when flying across africa where most of the navaids can't even remember what they are supposed to do, you need a GPS. Saved about 2.5hrs on a return ferry once sitting at FL100, which of course didn't go into my Xmas bonus
.
Most GPS errors come in from human error... i.e. putting in the wrong way points, or just plain not knowing how to use it. I did a back seat flight in a small plane with a friend and a 10000+ hr fixed wing instructor, who had a nice big 11x13cm garmin display on the dash showing them exactly where they were, and they overflew the airport in a bit of haze... All they knew was how to turn it on! Guess who stopped using an old instructor after that conversation once we landed.
Oh, and to see if the GPS is accurate or not, check the display page that gives you the distance of accuracy it has aquired...