Navigation and the Airlines

Abstract

With the comparative absence of navigation aids in the earlier days of flying, up to about ten years ago, the navigator was constantly engaged in associating observations, calculations and chartwork in what was essentially a high-class guessing game. The low speeds (just over 100 knots on flying boats and just under 200 knots on landplanes) provided enough time for this rather intriguing exercise to be carried out in a fairly relaxed atmosphere, conducive to an individualistic approach that could be justified by results. The navigator's performance was largely (at that stage of aviation) judged on the neatness of his plotting, the accuracy of ETA'S and the absence of late course corrections before arriving at destination or a check point. If there is anything in the view that navigation is an art, this particular yardstick certainly induced considerable artifice in the navigator.Although airline operations have changed vastly since then, old customs in the cockpit die hard and the mentality associated with those days persists, in my view to the grave detriment of air transportation as a whole. Increased traffic, higher airspeeds and the requirements of turbine-powered aircraft indicate that navigation is no longer in any sense an isolated function demanding the full-time attention of a highly trained specialist. Fortunately, science has produced navigational systems capable of easy interpretation that achieve a degree of precision far beyond the archaic and cumbersome methods of yesteryear. We must make use of this precision and utilize airspace (a precious commodity nowadays) efficiently if we are to build the world's future air traffic pattern on sound foundations; because thereby lies the only solution to the so-called air traffic control problem.The navigation of aircraft in the air with respect to each other is becoming of supreme importance. The practice of referring to 'artificially created ATC restrictions' has somewhat misleading implications. Such restrictions as are imposed are an effect not a cause, the cause being potential aircraft-to-aircraft interference. The real remedy is to remove in the planning stage as much of the interference as possible and to deal expeditiously with any residual interference. If we persist in following practices that create more and more interference on the basis that because the aircraft is capable of flight in three dimensions it should be able to operate unfettered in all, we are emulating the proverbial ostrich. The most dangerous outlook takes it for granted that any restriction on an aircraft's 372