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A comment on Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $80 million yacht. Parent comment

Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by mikeash on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:33AM (#6121706)
A lot of small airports with very little traffic.

Counting airports doesn't give you an accurate picture, because just about any airport can have a GPS approach, since the whole point is that it doesn't require any ground equipment. That doesn't mean those approaches get much use, because people don't fly into those airports all that much, especially not on instrument approaches.

I fly out of an airport with a published GPS approach and no ILS, and people use the GPS approach on well under 1% of the total landings there. Any reasonably busy airport will have ILS.

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Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by hedgie13 on Monday July 29, 2013 @11:40AM (#6121755)
True, they are less busy, but it does not mean GPS is not used for instrument approaches (as parent implied).

I fly airplane without IFR GPS (IFR student), but ATC is trying to assign us GPS approach all the time (when coming into airport with ILS). As far as I understand, GPS approaches are used, even if they are less critical in busier airports. Besides, sometimes ILS is not available in bigger airports as well.

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Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by toomuchtodo on Monday July 29, 2013 @12:04PM (#6121944)
ILS was not available on the SFO runway the Asiana aircraft crashed on ~2 weeks back:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

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Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by hedgie13 on Monday July 29, 2013 @12:15PM (#6122007)
Yes, but the weather was clear. No need for ILS in such weather.
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Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by toomuchtodo on Monday July 29, 2013 @12:51PM (#6122253)
Unless of course you've never landed at SFO before in an aircraft you're barely type-rated on.
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Re:Texas students fake GPS signals and take control of an $8... by mikeash on Monday July 29, 2013 @12:57PM (#6122288)
Neither should matter. A visual landing at any airport is pretty much the same, and the basics don't change for different aircraft. There's nothing at all tricky about a visual approach into SFO.
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