NCYankee wrote:
There is no requirement to carry charts anywhere in the regulations for part 91.
You can navigate using VRPs and dead reckoning. You don’t really need the chart on board. The vague rules are good because they allow some flexibility. That doesn’t mean they can’t hang you on them. They’re not that good when someone is trying to circumvent them.
Peter wrote:
Here in Europe you would have a war if somebody tried to force the use of say Skydemon, for normal use, or for PPL training.
Why? Nothing would be stopping anyone from applying for approval. Just as there is not just one certified GNSS box. I for one would welcome it if say PocketFMS got formal approval to provide charts. We need to move forward and it would get us out of the grey area.
Uncertified avionics, hand-held GPS, microlights, and experimentals aptly demonstrate that certification and approval has been both in the way of progress and safety in light aviation. Skydemon, Autorouter, etc. would not exist if all of them required approvals before they got started.
A lot of these requirements were put in place when aviation and avionics were cutting edge and innovative. Now it is keeping mid-range personal aviation in the last century.
@Cobalt That doesn’t change the fact that some kind of approval is necessary when you want to shift the blame. Well, not really. You could say that anyone publishing charts, NOTAMs, what not is automatically responsible. It would be interesting to see how many providers would stand behind their product and how many would put a big disclaimer on saying you can’t use it as a primary source. That is without verifying the information somewhere else, somewhere official (if there is no such source, they can hardly require it, but I wouldn’t want to debate this in some of the less developed countries where one can expect such issues).
Of course SkyDemon and others can exist. But if there is an error in their data and you bust some airspace, try putting the blame on them. You’ll probably sweat a lot while defending your flight planning. They don’t really have to care whether it’s inconvenient, they’ll have you by your testicles. Your only hope would be that the official sources are missing the information as well.
PS: Approval then should remove blame from a provider as long as it followed all the procedures as it should have. Relevant authority approved it as good enough. Mistakes can happen.
I think products like SD, placarded “VFR-only” as they mostly are, are immune from product liability because any defence lawyer with more than 2 braincells would ask “what navigation methods were trained in your PPL” and the answer would of course be “map, compass and stopwatch”. He would then ask “why did you not use this method?” and IMHO, IANAL, the case would collapse.
I have never heard of these firms getting sued. Maybe they have but for sure nobody has spoken up. Also, for the vendor to get sued and losing the case, you would need a coincidence of
The use of these tablet products is concentrated where there is a high GA density, so database errors are likely to get reported where they are most likely.
The chance of these holes in the cheese all lining up are miniscule.
A CFIT is no problem because you are supposed to be VFR i.e. VMC and then a CFIT is impossible 
So any terrain errors are not going to result in a liability.
IFR is different and Jeppesen charge a load more for their products and probably pay bigger insurance premiums. But also their IFR charts get tested all the time so errors are likely found quickly. Jepp data is of generally high quality.
My earlier post said “forced” i.e. a school is required to teach the GPS (handheld) product. IMHO that will never happen – in Europe.
Peter wrote:
The US regs require the carriage of a VOR receiver (etc) but is there anything there which requires it to be used?
A minor correction Peter, US regulations don’t require the carriage of a VOR receiver for IFR operations. The requirement is for navigational equipment suitable for the route being flown. There is a regulation that requires periodic checking of the VOR for accuracy if it is used for IFR navigation, but with a WAAS GPS, that is largely unnecessary.
Peter wrote:
A CFIT is no problem because you are supposed to be VFR i.e. VMC and then a CFIT is impossible So any terrain errors are not going to result in a liability.
If the error causes the software to create a route that takes you into a blind valley and you don’t have the performance to get out (or you screw up when it catches you by surprise)…
Peter wrote:
My earlier post said “forced” i.e. a school is required to teach the GPS (handheld) product. IMHO that will never happen – in Europe.
Have I said anything about forcing someone to use something? You brought that in, without any reason, when trying to explain why you think any European authority could never approve some software. Schools are required to teach about GNSS (it’s part of the syllabus), but not any particular product.
If the error causes the software to create a route that takes you into a blind valley and you don’t have the performance to get out (or you screw up when it catches you by surprise)…
In VMC, as you are supposed to be if VFR, there is no liability on the software vendor because only an idiot will follow a GPS track into a box canyon, in vis so bad they cannot get back out 
Have I said anything about forcing someone to use something? You brought that in, without any reason, when trying to explain why you think any European authority could never approve some software. Schools are required to teach about GNSS (it’s part of the syllabus), but not any particular product.
What relevance would an approval have?
A school can dispose of GPS training with a bit of GPS training, using any product they like. There isn’t anything to approve on say SD or PFMS, same as there is nothing to approve on some brand of circular slide rule.
I am sure every software vendor would absolutely love to claim “CAA approved” on the box So I am sure they have all tried it, and been told to go away.
Before I use a product, I am making sure it has the quality I need and expect. So let’s take Skydemon – before I started using it (and indeed still before I use it in a country where it isn’t in wide use), I did some due diligence and quickly figured out that, in the area of intended use, the airspace was spot on, but the terrain features were a bit rubbish [note – they have improved markedly since] and used it accordingly. The big deficiencies and limitations were widely known and discussed, and addressed over time.
As a result of this and other tools, fewer people get lost, more people actually check NOTAMS and weather thoroughly before the flight than before.
One competitor, Jeppesen FliteMap / FlietStar, a product from an “approved data provider”, had and still has fundamental data errors, is lacking key safety enhancing functionality (such as depicting along-track terrain) so it is WORSE from a safety and user friendliness point of view. It is also more expensive.
Requiring certification for anything that is only ever going to achieve low volumes, combined with copyright, is anti-safety because it stifles innovation and creates monopolies with incredible pricing power.
Peter wrote:
In VMC, as you are supposed to be if VFR, there is no liability on the software vendor because only an idiot will follow a GPS track into a box canyon, in vis so bad they cannot get back out
I wrote nothing about visibility. If the map shows the valley goes through a range, software plans your route via that valley (or you plan it yourself, based on that map), it could very well be too late when you notice it’s in fact blind and doesn’t lead through. Then you either must be able to turn around or have enough power to outclimb the terrain. That’s the performance I was writing about. And you could very well screw up (fail to notice it’s too narrow, lose control in steep turn, etc.).
Of course it’s pilot’s error. You are not supposed to rely on it. You can use it, but you’re supposed to verify everything. That’s the whole point of what I’m writing about.
What relevance would an approval have?
Are you kidding? I wrote that in Australia CASA approved certain products as a replacement for official paper charts. And you start writing about forcing schools to use particular product and ask for relevance of an approval? What? I don’t understand you at all. I would have thought it’s quite clear what it means when a relevant authority says you can use say SkyDemon instead of official paper charts. Why should it be an issue that there are several products on the market? As I wrote, there are several GNSS boxes as well and nobody is forcing anyone to use some particular box (for training or otherwise). Why are you creating a problem? Schools could very well stay with paper charts.
Peter wrote:
There isn’t anything to approve on say SD or PFMS, same as there is nothing to approve on some brand of circular slide rule.
Of course there is. You can overview how they get their data, how they assure its quality, etc.
Cobalt wrote:
Before I use a product, I am making sure it has the quality I need and expect.
And that’s how it should be. But I though the discussion is about using it as your primary source. Otherwise it’s your responsibility to check.
Jeppesen might be approved, but that doesn’t necessarily mean all their products are.
I wrote nothing about requiring certification. I would just like an approved electronic solution. So I could forget about paper maps. We are in 21. century you know. I don’t see how you could accomplish that without some approval. I’m not saying all such products would have to be approved, I would just like some to be, to be considered by authorities as good as an official paper chart.
