You and I must be flying in different places because I have never done a Eurocontrol IFR flight which wasn’t totally RNAV i.e. virtual waypoints. All of this was RNAV.
What you mean is that the enroute phases on those flights were RNAV. I would wager that most terminal area navigation was on vectors, and most approaches were conventional. It’s natural that the transition to PBN starts with RNAV 5 for enroute, and that RNAV 1 for terminal and RNP APCH for approaches comes after – the cost-benefit slopes that way. But we are a very very long way from a fully PBN environment.
I would wager that most terminal area navigation was on vectors, and most approaches were conventional
Sure, but if you speak to ATC that is what they want. They want the tactical control of traffic.
The idea of traffic flying programmed tracks at mach 0.45743 etc is a pipe dream. TCUs and CBs are not (yet) RNAV approved and all you need is one of these to park itself on the RNAV STAR route and the whole thing goes haywire, and ATC have to vector everybody.
The whole “4D” concept is flawed IMHO but I can see why it is a technocrat’s (which is a pretty good description of the whole Eurocontrol building) dream.
Peter wrote:
The idea of traffic flying programmed tracks at mach 0.45743 etc is a pipe dream.
Yes and no. I had an RNAV STAR this morning with an RNAV transition to the ILS at EDDM. They vectored me off it onto the final approach track but were clearly using it to position all the aircraft before peeling them off for a 180 onto final. But they are certainly not yet very common.
So you flew a STAR and then got vectors. That is not unusual. Even Gatwick assigns STARs.
Peter wrote:
So you flew a STAR and then got vectors. That is not unusual. Even Gatwick assigns STARs.
An RNAV transition is using GPS much further into the terminal area than a typical STAR. Essentially it put you on downwind.
That is fair enough; the old GPS units don’t have the transitions in their databases. But even a GNS430 does have them. This is a bit like my Q in the other thread about needing a “W” box for enroute. But this is the same issue with RNAV SIDs/STARs which I cannot legally fly anyway. But such a large % of traffic is not RNAV or PRNAV that airports have to maintain the non-RNAV procedures, especially for the slower traffic.
An interesting snippet. Note the bit about 4km error.
Clearly, the DAB radio transmitters are just using the time data and are not cross-checking the 3D position with EGNOS 
Dave_Phillips wrote:
An interesting snippet.
I disagree. It’s crap reporting. The article, apart from the DAB issue, is pure speculation not spoiled by any fact.
The article, apart from the DAB issue, is pure speculation not spoiled by any fact.
Why is that?
Would it be because any modern GPS receiver would chuck out a single “odd one out” satellite?
