It’s not apocryphal. A candidate for the instrument rating went up with an examiner for his flight test. The examiner, after carefully covering the screens on the airplane’s dual Garmin 430s, asked the pilot to perform an NDB approach. With some difficulty, the instrument candidate was finally able to explain to the examiner that without the displays on the GPS navigators there was no way the approach could be flown.
While some examiners and instructors were looking the other way, the avionics industry has made significant changes in the way we navigate, and the airplane manufacturers have made impressive strides in the way we aviate. No longer are sophisticated avionics systems the purview of the heavy iron; smaller airplanes are becoming technically advanced transports. But there’s good news. The Federal Aviation Administration, recognizing the changes in the way we navigate and aviate, is now working to change the way we educate.
