mtrv said:
This particular NTSB report is used as an excellent example of old GPS versus new GPS with terrain mapping displays. In fact, after this accident, this company's aircraft were equipped with new terrain mapping displays, as can be seen by reading farther down.
With the future of synthetic 3D terrain displays in IMC conditions, coupled with GPS for exact positioning, this type of flight into terrain accident could easily be avoided. Old school won't even get close.
No doubt that the new stuff is very good at enhancing situational awareness. My problem is when pilots become dependant on it. I still do some instructing on the side, mostly to friends or business type peeps that are moving into higher performance airplanes. I worked with a guy a couple of years ago that bought a nice twin with all the goodies. The problem was he could fly instruments as long as it all worked, as soon as I would fail a map or gps he was completely lost and was all over the sky.
Sure the new stuff is reliable....but not 100%. Twice I had a Primary screen fail in flight, once was at 900 feet on an ILS in a snow storm, the screen (Honeywell) went tie dye on me, faded out into a Grateful Dead T shirt. Old school knowledge will not quit on you....as long as you know what you are doing. 90% of the BFR or instrument comp clients that I work with that are used to GPS maps and all the goodies can barely keep the airplane upright on partial panel...much less shoot an approach with it. A great deal of pilots out there now do not have the skills to deal with large electrical or equipment failures. In the airline world the most common failure that occurs is avionics based. Over the years I have had 3 piston engines, and one jet engine fail, and a rollback to idle on a second. I cannot even come close to figuring out how many autopilots, radios, screens, lights, gps's, INS's etc have crapped out on me.
The simple test to see if you are too dependant on moving maps? Shut off the map and have somebody give you a non published hold, if you have to resort to drawing pictures on a scrap piece of paper you have situational awareness issues you need to correct. Another one is to have somebody fail the map and then have you execute a missed approach to the hold point...that is another one that really screws with the glass cripple set. Both are cases that can kill you if you have to take lots of time to figure out. I am just as guilty as the next guy at sometimes letting myself get too glassy eyed. A couple of furloughs and switching back and forth between glass and steam gauges several times now has kept me from getting too bad, at least it made me realize just how much glass can make you complacent about your basic scan and skills.
As I said, glass is great, I love it. We just need to remember how to fly without it too, because if it is electronic or mechanical it will fail, only a matter of when. (Murphy states that it always quits at the worst possible time too!!

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