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Old 15th Dec 2014, 14:00
  #75 (permalink)  
aterpster
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Well the intent (both FAA and ICAO) is to eventually replace the majority of ILS installations with WAAS or GBAS approaches (i.e., LPV and GLS). GLS CAT I is already operational in the US, and the FAA is currently testing GLS CAT III prototypes. (Only about 100 of the 1,200 ILS systems in the US are CAT II/III).
Politics and economics always trump the FAA. GLS is slowly progressing because one airline is willing to dabble with it.

But, think if you were a fleet manager at say, DAL or AAL, where Boeing wants a million dollars per airplane in your 150 bird fleet to change out your FMS and related gear to give you WAAS/LAAS and GLS auto-land capability. I don't know the exact count of CAT III ILS's but your number sounds correct. Those 100, or so, CAT III systems are at airports that get weather on a frequent enough basis that fail-active autoland is essential.

I those CAT III ILS's will be around for a lot of years.

As to VORs, the FAA is already pruning them, but rather slowly. They agreed with ICAO to not decommission any VORs that are the end point of oceanic routes. Also, few, if any, in the intermountain west.

If the politics of existing avionics hadn't driven the equipage of RNP AR, that system would transition from LNAV/VNAV to GLS and much lower minimums than we see today with RNP AR.
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