mtrv said:
According to the most latest reports, it was the wrong runway in pre-dawn darkness.
If this, IS the case, then it's time for the charts first, and GPS second crowd to get off their butts, and realize that a moving map GPS showing the aircrafts actual position relative to taxiways and runways can be very beneficial, and life saving!
All of this technology is available now for panel mount and handhelds. The airport diagram can even automatically load on the MFD during taxi operations on arrival or before departure.
When it's in front of your face, with actual position; something that a paper chart won't do, then it's easy to see where technology counts!
Yes, I'm quite pissed at everyone who believes that GPS techology should come in second place to old school. I see it all the time here.
Sigh.... You really just don't get it do you? Nobody says that GPS should be discarded as it does not offer any benefits. Obviously, it is a very powerful tool. What people are saying, is that it may not be the smartest thing to train students from the beginning on glass, using all the latest nav technology. The reason being is that if you do, they may not develop fundamental skills which are basic to *all* aviation, skills that they may need in an emergency, or more likely, will probably need at thier first jobs, because thier first jobs likely will not be in glass cockpits.
It's like autopilots. Autopilots are a great invention. Nobody says that Autopilots should be discarded. However, you'd have to be stupid in the extreme to believe that primary iunstruction should be done exclusively with autopilots. The reason being that someone who has relied on an autopilot for everything except takeoff and landing since thier first flight will not have the skills to fly an airplane by heand in VFR conditions, let alone on instruments.
Someone who had learned to fly under all conditions by hand, can learn to use an autopilot very easily, whereas someone who has depended on an autopilot since thier first flight will not be able to fly by hand.
Likewise, someone who had learned to basic navigation will be able to adapt to more advanced nav systems quite easily, whereas someone who has depended on a GPS moving map display from the very begining will never develop the necessary skills to navigate without.
This seems such a simple and obvious concept, why do you find it so elusive?
To bring things back to the topic at hand. Yeah, sure if they'd had some spiffy airport diagram pulled up on thier tv screen, and they had cross checked it as they lined up, they could have noticed thier mistake before it was too late.
By the same token, if they had checked thier compass against the runway heading, they also would have prevented this accident. Now, I'm not placing blame, or speculating on causes, but apparently they did not do this. A compass/heading indicator check against runway heading is one of those basic, day one things you learn, and it appears, from what we know at this point, it would have prevented this accident. Again, I want to emphasize I'm not criticizing or assigning blame, I'm just making the point that yeah, gee-whiz technology could prevent this
if you use it but so too could almost century old technolgy and procedures prevent this
if you use it
