RIght Engine
Thanks for clarifying matters, the subsequent debate does indicate how times have changed.....
....I suspect the phrase "FMGC/FMS database" isn't cuddly enough for the
PR and jurno types so they've used "maps" as a shorthand....and off we've gone on a classic Pprune tangent.
FWIW as has been mentioned the BA crew iPad(s) are personal issue, have nowt to do with engineering or the engineers and contain a worldwide database of airports and charts.. so regardless of what was done to the airframe the crew themselves will have had so many electronic maps and airfield plates on board that could have plotted a route to Hawaii if they so wished, it sounds to me like the problem was with where the
aircraft itself could legitimately and sensibly go.
No criticism of the guys involved, but it does seem a shame if the powers-that-be now prevent a crew from using a computer flight-plan to construct a route in the FMGS using Lat/Long-defined waypoints on NAT Tracks and then airways - like we used to do before the advent of FMS.
Chris S, I'm an FMS rather than a FMGC user, but I'm guessing the crew may well have been able to load lat/longs for the ocean and construct airways, again using lat/longs etc. However if they only had a European database loaded in the FMGC they won't have had any US navaids, SIDS and STARS, instrument approaches, possibly even the airport position in the database, and that can get very limiting these days, not just from a navigation POV but it can also impact aircraft systems (e.g only a possibility for the bus but based on another type there can be implications for EGPWS, pressurisation)..... I know there will no doubt be further comment about the youth of today along the lines of "When I was a lad I used to fly the Canarsie upside down, all engines out," but for example you can't legitimately "hand build " the likes of the increasingly common RNAV STARS and RNAV approaches in the FMGC or FMS...they
have to be extracted from the database.
So please Gents don't blame it all on the youth of today, even those ""youths" like myself who are over 60, who started on paper charts, Dalton computers and the 1 in 60 rule back in the day; times have changed and these days you really are very limited if the aircraft "box" isn't loaded properly.