Loss of Remote Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) for GPS significantly compromises situational awareness, particularly in IMC or at night, mandating immediate transition to alternate navigation or, if on approach, climbing to avoid terrain.
Pilots should proactively check RAIM availability before flight and always have backup navigation plans and alternate approaches ready, as exemplified by a recent fatal air ambulance crash involving repeated GPS loss due to military jamming.
This accident underscores the critical importance of robust aeronautical decision-making, emphasizing the need to utilize all available navigation tools, understand NOTAMs, and prioritize safety by climbing when GPS reliability is compromised during an approach.
Losing situational awareness on any flight is a bad thing, but it’s particularly bad in IMC.
When you can’t see the horizon because of clouds or darkness, it can become a potentially deadly situation. This is why instrument flight candidates are taught to fly by “partial panel,” which means the instructor “fails” an instrument, often the attitude indicator, by covering it up.
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Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.
