I can't agree more with you, pattern_is_full.
Having left the profession few years ago as a skipper on a 744, and if nothing has dramatically changed since then, I always used "magnetic" on any route and any ocean crossing (it was the company SOP)...maybe it was just luck, but I always found the destination. Sometimes, just for curiosity, I changed from magnetic to true for a while, to have an idea of the local variation (being "lazy " to check the map), but then I reverted to magnetic.
And as you say, ATC never gives a command like, e.g. "Turn right heading 040 TRUE"...it has no sense at "normal latitudes"..., after all, the runways are "magnetic", so the final approach course, the courses leading to the approach and back to the enroute system.
The TRUE system has a role, in the unlikely event, today, (at least in the commercial aviation) of a complete failure of the navigation system so we should go back to the basics and plotting therefore the route on a TRUE referenced chart while considering the local variation.
Last edited by vincenzino montella; 10th Jan 2016 at 21:42.