I don’t think it changes much. PBN is about on-board equipment and pilot qualifications, not about how accurately a pilot actually flies. I know it’s a bit hard to separate the two. Also, PBN is just a fancy new word…ever since we had out first GPS on board (mid-nineties) we have been able to fly to any fix with a one degree accuracy… radar controllers have been pretty much used to that ever since.
boscomantico wrote:
PBN is about on-board equipment
Oh dear. You’ll be failing your PBN exam and be grounded then. 
It is a Concept, dear boy, a Concept. Like God, it encompasses everything. n in one and one in n, where n>3.
PBN includes procedures, databases, training, certification and so, so much more!
“PBN is about on-board equipment”. (Sits down, shakes head and takes sip of beer.)
Edited to say that you then edited a bit more in
Yes, forgot that. But doesn’t change the point.
boscomantico wrote:
But doesn’t change the point.
Well, it does rather.
boscomantico wrote:
not about how accurately a pilot actually flies.
It is, really. Within the accuracy of the specification (ie, 5nm, 1nm, 0.3nm or whatever) 95% of the time.
Does anyone operate PBN?
IFR in Europe is like it was since GPS came in.
I don’t agree. If it were, then you would always have to be on (a perfect) autopilot. Which is not mandatory.
Peter wrote:
Does anyone operate PBN?
August next year is when it all really kicks off.
boscomantico wrote:
If it were, then you would always have to be on (a perfect) autopilot. Which is not mandatory.
Well, firstly that is not true. I can definitely hand fly within PBN requirements. I would imagine that most current IRs can.
Secondly, the autopilot does not have to be perfect, PBN allows for a certain amount of error, but it should have GPSS capability or it may introduce gross error.
Thirdly, it nearly was a requirement for PBN to have an autoslew HSI and an autopilot. PPL/IR flew some trial flights to show that it was not necessary, and the requirement was withdrawn, but it was a close run thing.
But the point was that nothing will change in practice. Even before “PBN”, a certain “accuracy” was expected from pilots when following an ATC instruction. And in the future, this will be the case too… 5 miles as per PBN (in the enroute phase, which what we were talking about).
That is actually very very old Timothy and not quite right. Jim Thorpe convinced a UK CAA guy, after a flight demo, to not require an auto slewing HSI for the JAA TGL10 piece of crap / job creation scheme. The said guy then comprehensively washed his hands of the deal at a speech at a Eurocontrol conference in 2008. I was there. I spoke to him later and he said he had no option for political reasons. TGL10 got overtaken by events and became irrelevant, like most of these mad projects which try to formalise how planes are flown by pilots and controlled by ATC.
Bosco is spot on, thankfully…
We will still get increasingly complicated regs to cope with but I am pretty confident nothing is going to change in actual flying for many years.
I am transferring the camera footage 
Bosco and Peter — Timothy is right. The PBN tolerances include “flight technical error” which means pilot technique.
You can hand-fly RNAV 1 (P-RNAV) on raw data if you have GPS, but (IIRC) if you have DME-DME RNAV then you need a flight director or autopilot. Why? Because the positioning accuracy of DME-DME RNAV is less precise than that of GPS. The GPS tolerances + the tolerances of hand flying on raw data is within the RNAV 1 tolerances, but the DME-DME RNAV tolerances + the tolerances of hand flying on raw data is not.
Of course enroute PBN in Europe is RNAV 5 which gives you quite a bit of leeway.
