Eurocontrol doesn’t care about D*
OK. Am I right that D2 means PRNAV/RNAV1 and currently there is no enroute airspace which requires this? This one has been kicking around for years and there have been rumours that e.g. the Amsterdam TMA is PRNAV (maybe just at night). Is all this nonsense?
Also there are proposals for PRNAV in the London TMA from 2018 (possibly only for flights terminating at one of the London airports i.e. not relevant to light GA). This one is going through the CAA as we speak. If this happens for all traffic, IFR in CAS in the UK will become closed for all non-PRNAV aircraft, which will incidentally make any IFR concession for homebuilts almost worthless unless they splash out five figures on avionics and then I wonder how the hell they are going to get the PRNAV paperwork when their CofA (which they don’t have) can’t support it…. Everybody will then be filing PBN/B2D2 
Also many airports have SIDs/STARs which are only PRNAV. Does this mean that flying with PBN/B2 will still work? Currently it does i.e. nobody is enforcing the PRNAV terminal procedures anywhere. I can see Eurocontrol will not be policing this but say Zurich could deny an arrival to a PBN/B2 flight.
Eurocontrol only enforces equipment codes very selectively. It depends on how the restrictions are coded. An airspace/route requiring P/B-RNAV might have the flag set or not. If a route requiring P/B-RNAV passes through IFPS, it does not mean you can fly it without the equipment.
The quality of the restrictions in IFPS varies greatly.
Zurich could deny an arrival to a PBN/B2 flight.
I bet they don’t know what equipment codes you have specified.
I bet they don’t. And if they cared they would lose most of their traffic immediately, which presumably is why they don’t care.
Makes one wonder who sits there publishing this crap.
What really interests me in this case is whether specifying PRNAV/RNAV1 (i.e. D2 or B2D2) ever gets you better routings.
e.g. the Amsterdam TMA is PRNAV
I don’t know – but if so Eurocontrol doesn’t enforce this.
Certain Paris area SIDs are PRNAV – nobody enforces this IMO anyway (plus there seems to be a concession where they accept BRNAV equipment with a CDI/HSI scale adjustable to 1NM full scale)
I doubt anyone in Zürich would notice, given that the PRNAV SIDs are exactly the same as “classical” SIDs, with the mandatory cross check with classical instruments below 5000’ lifted for PRNAV SIDs.
Makes one wonder who sits there publishing this crap.
Mostly the NAAs.
whether specifying PRNAV/RNAV1 ever gets you better routings.
No. Flight Plan wise at least.
During actual flight, I can’t imagine this for the enroute phase (which is radar controlled anyway). For SIDs/STARs you’d have a few options more, but I doubt anyone would look at flight plan codes, they’d just ask you whether a certain procedure would be acceptable. After all, many procedures have additional constraints that cannot be coded in the flight plan anyway, such as min climb gradients, or the french BRNAV concessions.
Most (all?) SIDs in Norway are P-RNAV.
For non-compliant aircraft, they have omnidirectional departures though, so no big deal.
I wonder if whoever publishes all these PRNAV procedures realises that they could, with one simple move (known as “enforcing them”) kill about 99% of GA traffic, and some large % of business jet traffic?
kill about 99% of GA traffic
Where? France has the BRNAV GPS with better CDI scaling concession, Norway the omnidirectional departures, and for Zürich for every PRNAV SID there’s a corresponding BRNAV SID with (legally) slightly higher pilot workload, so where would GA be killed?
If they withdrew the concessions…
and there have been rumours that e.g. the Amsterdam TMA is PRNAV
It isn’t a rumour. Technically to go into Schipol you must be RNAV1 (or PRNAV) authorised.
I wonder if whoever publishes all these PRNAV procedures realises that they could, with one simple move (known as “enforcing them”) kill about 99% of GA traffic, and some large % of business jet traffic?
Of course they do. Presumably that is why they don’t enforce it.
