Waas
Joined: Oct 1999
Posts: 3,325
Likes: 2
From: UK
Commercial aviation uses mostly ILS and occassionally VOR or NDB based approaches so they don't need GPS approaches. In Europe, there may be a market on the fringes (e.g. Ryanair flying into some regional airport that doesn't have an NDB or VOR) but that's all it is.
SSD
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,981
Likes: 0
From: He's on the limb to nowhere
Free flight should also save the airlines a ton of money. I read a single LAAS installation will cover all runways within 20 miles and cost less that a single ILS. I guess all they have to do now is to make it work.....
M609, how have they got around the integrity problems?
M609, how have they got around the integrity problems?
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 13,787
Likes: 0
From: EuroGA.org
The driver for commercial aviation to use GPS is the money they'd save in no longer having to maintain those ILS and beacon systems.
The airlines have to have all the kit anyway; unless you dedicate a plane to a single intra-EU route all its life. The last thing they would want to do is "pay as you go" extra for a GPS approach.
The incentive for GPS approaches would be in the navaid maintenance group. But they would still need to force all airliners to equip the planes and retrain the crews. We aren't talking of US-style GPS approaches; these are GPS guided precision approaches down to 200ft or less, down to Cat3c. This would take not years but decades.
If Galileo was meant to be a play on this, it would be a very long shot. Also Navstar isn't going to stand still all those years; it will get better, more powerful (better S/N ratio).
If savings are obtained by decommissioning navaids and landing systems, would those savings be passed on to airlines in reduced en-route charges? I think the answer is obvious
I bet the direct cost of maintaining say the ILS at Heathrow is an insignificant part of the money which an airliner pays to land there and unload its contents.
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 1,034
Likes: 1
From: 59°45'36N 10°27'59E
M609, how have they got around the integrity problems?
Still just one airline that have right boxes in the planes tough, Wideroe Airlines. (They have been a part of the project since day one, they are by far the biggest player on the STOL network)
