Just thinking out load here, and call me a heretic, but if Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia have a difference with the US, just maybe its the US thats out of step?
At least for GA, the US market would be as big or bigger than the rest of the world combined. So I do actually think they set the pace of the marching steps.
According to Bendix King, there are somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 general aviation fixed-wing aircraft in the world. About one-third of these aircraft have hull values less than $50,000, while another one-third of them have hull values between $50,000 and $100,000.
Note: The NATA fact book indicates that about 200,000 of these 250 - 300,000 aircraft are in the US (ie well over half the world fleet). There are something like 10,000 GA aircraft in Australia.
But, the real issue (which is where Dick started) is why we would implement something so far ahead of the world's biggest market when the (US based) manufacturers have not yet developed products for their own domestic requirement let alone our different one.
And for W8 my guess to replace our Garmin 300 & King Nav / Com will be:
Txp $3500 (currently typically USD$3300, but will come down)
GTN 650 $10k (430's will be gone by the time we do it, but the new King & Avidyne units might be a cheaper option by then)
Encoder $1k
New CDI $2k
Engineering orders $1k
Install $5k
Total $23,500.
In the US, the government has a fund to soften this blow to aircraft owners
NextGen GA Fund Will Finance Avionics Upgrades - AVweb flash Article.
There is some logic to this as what is really happening is that the cost of our infrastructure is moving from a government expense to an aircraft owner expense.
I have until 2 Feb 2017 to do this and probably will, but I can see a lot of guys giving up IFR and sticking to VFR. In a recent interview about its new GPS units, King said that the average owner of a GA aircraft in the US is a 57 year old male. You can see these guys voting with their feet and moving to RAA. Others will just buy a boat.
Exactly how different do we need to be? Hard hard do we want to make it for GA? Does driving aircraft from IFR to VFR overall improve safety or reduce it?