I knew it would happen eventually, but while I was on holiday last week a notam was issued that decommissioned most of the navaids in The Netherlands. Suddenly there are no NDBs left, and only a couple VORs. I’m wondering if other countries are planning the same?
Are these en-route? or assisted with approaches?
Both actually.
You still need conventional approach at destination or at alternate if you plan to fly an RNP approach, talking about planning requirements, for practical approach flying VOR/NDB is close to useless 
I guess that would ILS/LOC but only big airports can afford these?
Many other countries are also cutting on their NavAid infrastructure but there is the concept of minimal network and few for contingency & training
From an AIRAC notice sent out by Air France it appears that for the time being, at least, France are intending to keep most of its ILS and DME.
Where these navaids government funded or paid for by a by a private aerodrome?
In the UK where the airfields are privately operated I do wonder if the cheapest navaid will win. So the ILS will be replaced by the LPV200 and the NDB/DME approach will remain?
text of AIC-A 02/2019 for The Netherlands:
After a thorough consultation process, it was agreed to reduce radio navigation stations in the Netherlands to the minimum needed as a fallback infrastructure. This reduction will be performed as follows.
All current ILS and DME stations will continue to operate. VOR and NDB beacons will be decommissioned.
However, four VOR radio beacons will be retained as a fallback and resilience network to overcome the case of GNSS outages. These VOR stations are: SPL, RTM, EEL and MAS.
All NDB (or locator) stations and the VOR beacons not mentioned above in the Amsterdam FIR will progressively be taken out of service in the 2019-2021 timeframe
dutch_flyer wrote:
. I’m wondering if other countries are planning the same?
I would think so. Sweden has very similar plan as the Netherlands. Most enroute VORs and all enroute NDBs will be decommissioned. A skeleton network of VORs will remain so that aircraft in controlled airspace are always in range of at least one VOR/DME station for fix taking. DMEs will remain as they are needed for DME-DME RNAV.
For approaches it depends on the airport owner, but we see a clear trend of replacing locator NDBs and marker beacons with DME.
The Q to ask is: who is using these navaids?
I have not used a VOR for any form of navigation using its radio signal since the day after I got my PPL 20 years ago, and with brief exceptions like the IR, especially the FAA one which was wholly VOR/DME/ILS stuff. One uses VORs all the time but as GPS waypoints.
NDBs have not been used for enroute navigation since around the 1950s. They have been used for approaches (but were always unreliable, so IR examiners, and “55hr IR = €30k” FTOs, loved them) but GPS did away with that.
In Europe, airliners all have INS, with DME-DME fixups. In the US domestic scene this was not always the case but INS is probably standard now across the fleets. And in Europe airspace policy is based mostly on airliners needs.
The problem is that GPS can be fairly easily jammed, and then GA has a problem, and VORs don’t help because there are too few of them to be useful.
I have to agree for low level GA I find VOR’s are next to useless.
Unfortunately GPS hasn’t done away with NDB approaches at all the airports that I fly into. In fact NDB is available at all of them, to both ends at all of them and at one place its the only option.
Disappointing I agree but that’s the current state of play.
