The Long-range Navigation of Civil Aircraft

Abstract

This paper, which was presented at an Ordinary Meeting of the Institute held in London on 15 November 1963, sets out to comment on certain aspects of the long-range navigation of civil aircraft. It concentrates on three areas where there seems to be room for improvement: reliability (a failure rate of 1 : 10 is suggested); the integration of navigation information into a single system and display; standardization of navigation facilities so that all aircraft can use the same basic system.It is concluded that a reliable system is required down to ground level, an indication of reliability should be presented to the pilot, that high reliabilities can be obtained by comparison of ground-based and self-contained aids, that a navigation computer is necessary to reduce the information to a presentable form, and that the use of very low frequencies seems to be the most promising way of developing an aid along these lines.