We’re a good 10 years into the brave, new world of technologically advanced aircraft (TAAs) and yet their glorious promise is only half-fulfilled. It makes you wonder how long after NextGen is officially “here” that we’ll feel it was worth the mandatory accessorizing of our aircraft.
Looking at what we’ve got in our hands today, I’ll grant that at least three items—lightning detection, datalink weather and GPS approaches—have made real changes in mission capability. That is, there are flights you can complete with these items that you wouldn’t have attempted (because you’d be threading thunderstorms blind) or couldn’t have executed (because there was no approach available).
