RTE reporting a plane crash with fatalities at Cork Airport

unfortunate that this happens then, I was wondering with the airport in Florida and recent goofyness with GPS and global magnetics in general whether, even if the equipment was all in proper working order, whether the readings could have been incorrect.

though I suppose a total lack of visibility is bad enough.


at least a few survived.

Chiral wrote:unfortunate that this happens then, I was wondering with the airport in Florida and recent goofyness with GPS and global magnetics in general whether, even if the equipment was all in proper working order, whether the readings could have been incorrect.

though I suppose a total lack of visibility is bad enough.


at least a few survived.

what happened in Florida with GPS? I know an airport had its runways renumbered due to magnetic shift, but every airport in the world does that as a matter of routine every few years. As a matter of interest the magnetic headings at Heathrow to the runways have shifted by nearly 30 degrees since the airport opened.

Many airports shift their magnetic headings by around 5 degrees a year or more. This is no big deal to pilots though as runway charts are constantly updated to reflect this. Manchester in the UK recently had to renumber its runways because of magnetic shift also.

in fact, even if the GPS signal fails or is in error the navigation hardware will direct you to the runway as the IRS equipment would override the GPS errors. The IRS uses gyroscopes and requires no outside source of reference once aligned.

It is a requirement on airliners to have this backup to still be able to fly without GPS. In fact, many Boeing airliners still flying are not even equipped with GPS

GPS off the coast of florida was (and still is?) being intermittently shut down for about a month because of some alleged "testing".

However, this is also when the GPS satellites were forecast to begin failing, as they are reaching the end of their lifespans and there hasn't been money in the budget to replace/update them for some time.


I was wondering if there might be a connection, a perfect storm of sorts.

But it appears that this was a weather-induced event and I'm grasping at straws.

Chiral wrote:GPS off the coast of florida was (and still is?) being intermittently shut down for about a month because of some alleged "testing".

However, this is also when the GPS satellites were forecast to begin failing, as they are reaching the end of their lifespans and there hasn't been money in the budget to replace/update them for some time.


I was wondering if there might be a connection, a perfect storm of sorts.

But it appears that this was a weather-induced event and I'm grasping at straws.

interesting though to hear of the GPS failures in Florida. This is the very reason why airliners must not use GPS as the primary navigation source

press conference now taking place at the airport