Forty-five years ago I got my private pilot certificate. Airports, airplanes and the rules of flight have changed so much since then that it’s impossible for me to imagine what aviation will be like 45 years from now.
When I got that certificate, navigation avionics were in their infancy compared with today. Yet even then, older pilots worried about those vortacs making navigation so easy that new pilots depended too much on all the navigation avionics. “What would they do if all those radios failed? They would be totally lost.”
Now I wonder the same about today’s new pilots. If the GPS ever fails, could they find their way?
In a way, we had more freedom 45 years ago. Airspace rules were simpler. I remember flying crop dusters, with no radios at all, into controlled airports like Charlotte and Greensboro, NC. I’d just fly in and look for the proper light signals from the tower. The GPS was nonexistent, but sectional charts were—and still are—beautiful works of science and art that would take you anywhere. In fact, the current issue of AOPA’s Flight Training magazine has an article extolling the wonders and virtues of the sectionals.
I see car drivers today heading off on long car trips without a map in the car—just a GPS—and I wonder if we have pilots doing the same thing? Scares me ‘bout to death.
