GPS approaches are a fact of life, authorised or not. In the GA community they often are not. So what should regulators do?
It may look slow off the mark to countries like the USA, Canada and New Zealand, among others, in which required navigation performance (RNP) GPS approaches have been active for years, but the UK Civil Aviation Authority is finally going to offer something similar. The CAA initiative is aimed at the general aviation community, and acknowledges the fact that light-aircraft pilots have been carrying out unauthorised GPS approaches to airfields for years, so publishing properly designed non-precision GPS approach procedures seems wise.
The agency forecasts that these approaches, designed by the CAA at six licensed aerodromes so far, are expected to be approved by the authority in July because the trials have been going well. So well, in fact, that the CAA says: "We have therefore taken the decision to move ahead with the project via a letter of intent rather than an eight-week consultation."
There are, however, questions for the future associated with what the CAA is doing - and these apply to all national aviation authorities, especially those in countries with fickle weather like the UK. All aerodromes are, in the end, going to have to have GPS approaches, because if they don't the pilots will make up their own. There is a lot of skill and expertise involved in designing RNP approaches, and the required level of expertise increases proportionately to the precision demanded. An RNP designation always has a figure with it stating the assumed lateral accuracy in nautical miles (or fractions thereof) to which the aircraft equipment can navigate and to which the approach has been designed.
So the first question is: will the CAA be the approach designer? Traditionally it has been, but should that remain a core task? The next point is: given the separation between service provision and regulation demanded by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, should the CAA be allowed to approve approaches it has designed?
There are companies that specialise in RNP approach design. If airports want to boost their traffic - especially in marginal weather - maybe they should contract an RNP designer and then call in their national authority to check and authorise it. Airlines can do (and in fact have done) the same thing: if they are frequently stymied by weather at a provincial airport they serve, it may pay them to get together with the airport and create an RNP approach. That way approaches will be provided where they are needed when they are needed. The market is the most efficient mechanism here.
Source: Flight International
