For at least the 50th time class E terminal airspace to 700 agl does not require VHF or Radar coverage in North America.

Every instrument approach is in a minimum of class E and it would not be possible considering the huge size of the USA and the many valleys and mountains to have coverage down to 700 agl at every one of these airports.

But after 24 years of repeating this myth I suppose it becomes as factual as Bigfoot.

Resist resist resist change in every way you can. Wait for the Royal Commission after lots more uneccessary deaths like Benalla

Front page of The Australian today. A King Air blundering around in IMC at Mt Hotham with a faulty GPS comes close to another King Air.

Full radar coverage but no radar service provided. 18 could be dead.

The aircraft with the faulty GPS then appears out of cloud at 100' above the trees well away from the normal approach path.

Full radar coverage on your iPhone but no way class E could be provided!

I believe five aircraft were approaching Mt Hotham at that time.

Can someone advise how many frequencies are also coupled to 120.75 at about 9am on a weekday morning.

Are there any "control" frequencies or are they all advisory?

If it was "blundering around" that suggests the flight crew were not up to the job. When did it become apparent that the GPS was faulty and did the unit have a history of faults.

Is that number based on the carrying capacity of 2 King Airs or on how many people were actually in the aircraft at the time?

I doubt the aircraft was doing an RNP so why was it anywhere near the ground if it was conducting an instrument approach at YHOT?

Was this incident reported to the ATSB by the flight crew as they are legally required to? If not why not?

I don't disagree with the premise that if the radar is available then it should be used to its full extent; but the way this incident has been described has been akin to the more sensationalist reporting about aviation we see in the media.

The article is behind a paywall apart from the graphic, which states that the pilot reported GPS issues well before arriving at YHOT. Since the pilot knew they had a faulty GPS, why on earth did they use it to carry out an approach and not divert somewhere with a ground-aid-based approach?!

If that is true, then an excellent question.

Other media have picked up the story, and it reads as a typical media beat-up.

Close call for 18 passengers on plane bound for Mt Hotham

The prelim ATSB description differs somewhat from the media description

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...-2015-108.aspx

After reading the Aus story it is indeed a bad show ( shows Flightaware tracking Sept 03 )
The Essendon KA all over the place
I'd be very upset too if I was the other KA driver from Bankstown

Sensationalist articles like that are poison for GA.

After reading that, who from the public would want to fly in anything other than that flown by the big end of town?

Huh! Please explain?

Dr :8

If the ATSB quotes such rubbish surely you should accept it as factual!

The only thing missing from the media reports is "pilots fighting with the controls, while passengers screamed in terror". No, there weren't 18 people on the one aircraft as the media tries to make it appear.
One pilot whose navigation competency is highly suspect makes some serious errors and gets lost - so that translates to "a major incident that could have dwarfed Lockhart". The entire beat-up hinges on "could have".
It is no more newsworthy an event than the dozen other incidents over the last few years, where someone screwed up, and a potential mid-air was possible.
I trust this King Air bloke gets his competency reviewed, it sounds like he barely scraped over the line when his licence was first issued.

Where do you think the media got this figure from? How about this posted earlier by Dick:

As for the GPS data being out of tolerance, that bit of info was provided by the operator so thats what the ATSB will investigate. I can sense a certain amount of hysteria permeating the postings.

If a fatal accident at YHOT didn't put people off flying there why would this change their minds?

There is NOT 'full radar coverage' there. Simple, there isn't so no need to say there is to emphasise a point.

I haven't read the newspaper article but on 3AW this morning Ross & John were having quite a bit of 'fun' with this. They stated that the passengers on the aircraft out of Essendon refused to take the same aircraft back if the same pilot was flying. They stated that another pilot had to be flown up to Mount Hotham to bring them and the aircraft back. Is this what the newspaper article stated as well?

They were making the pilot out to be an incompetent idiot.

No hysteria here Lookleft!

As one who has flown lots of GPS approaches, I was simply wondering how GPS data on a data card gets to be "out of tolerance"!

Dr :8

The 35 minute flight took about 1.3 hours, the Flightaware record is no longer available but there is still a photo of the track image on the front page of the Aus

VH-OWN ? 03-Sep-2015 ? YMEN / MEB - YHOT / MHU ? FlightAware

Can't find the one ex YSBK

Sorry Forky if you thought I was directing that comment at you, it was the bloke under yours!

Dick,
How do I operate IFR in C,E,G without VHF coms to ATC. I ant do it in VMC without cancelling IFR and proceeding VFR, like when I went to Cunnamulla recently, or to Blackall (@A060 due winds).

Then once in IMC at say 700AGL, how do I blast through all that E without a clearance, say 7000' at YBCK or YCMU? Is there some dispensation I am not aware of that allows flight in controlled airspace without a clearance?

I may be wrong, but nobody has ever pulled me up on this topic.

And then in IMC how do you do separation IFR from IFR without SSR/ADSB?

Happy to have E with the gear to back it up.