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Comment by nippoo | Hacker News Reader

This might be mildly annoying for car navigation systems. But nothing compared to the potential danger for aviation: several published instrument approaches are now GPS-only!

Reminds me of how NASA wouldn't fly the Shuttle over New Year's day to avoid rollover issues: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10459-y2k-like-fears-...

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Danger on approach is probably pretty unlikely. The vast majority of instrument approaches require the runway to be in sight before descending below an altitude minima. Where the approach is blind to touch down a higher level of equipment and procedures are required to verify the position and altitude. This could include checks against other data sources and monitoring.

I would really hope that something as critical as aviation instruments have the capacity to be updated to account for this and that it's been treated like a mini-Y2K with lots of fixes made ahead of time. But I guess we'll see...

You would hope that it would have happened ahead of time: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/gps-r...

I thought most airplanes have Inertial Navigation Systems with GPS for occasional calibration when the INS drifts.

I think the INS in modern airliners is actually accurate enough to not drift to the point of needing correction. INS + GPS exist to back up each other, and usually the pilot can switch between the two.

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