Aviation Navigation Views

General Goods

When an aircraft is in flight, it is moving relative to the body of air through which it is flying; therefore maintaining an accurate ground track is not as easy as it might appear, unless there is no wind at all — a very rare occurrence. The pilot must adjust heading to compensate for the wind, in order to follow the ground track. Initially the pilot will calculate headings to fly for each leg of the trip prior to departure, using the forecast wind directions and speeds supplied by the meteorological authorities for the purpose. These figures are generally accurate and updated several times per day, but the unpredictable nature of the weather means that the pilot must be prepared to make further adjustments in flight. A general aviation (GA) pilot will often make use of either the E6B flight computer - a type of slide rule - or a purpose-designed electronic navigational computer to calculate initial headings.

After reviewing these topics in the "Tutorial,z" use the Runway Selection and Flight Course Plotting activities that let you put your knowledge of Aviation Navigation to practical use in the "Take Controlt" subsection. The e"You Decidei" activity features a Jackson to Lansing, Michigan flight plan scenario. This simulation happens quite often, and will test out what you’ve learned about navigation tools and procedures

Several years ago, when satellites were being touted as aviation’s sole means of navigation from takeoff to touchdown, former FAA Administrator Langhorne Bond painted a picture of a dark winter’s night with below-limits weather up and down the east coast. In that scenario, he stated, terrorist GPS jammers could become “weapons of mass destruction.” The FAA shrugged it off as unfounded speculation. But in a recent report on the GPS-dependent ADS-B, the DOT’s Inspector General took the matter much more seriously, calling on the FAA to “work with the U.S. intelligence community to assess such potential threats.”