Unfortunately these are being used less and less and even deprecated in favour of GPS waypoints. Even when they are still around the pilots have less experience with them because they no longer use them every day.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at...
That’s an interesting characterization, given that the MON is a list of VORs they are not planning to take down.
It is a good thing that someone is second-guessing that. Degrading to MON wouldn't be great, but it would be much preferrable to hoping poor ATC can figure out how to vector everyone all the sudden.
I think more industries could apply the idea of a Minimum Operational whatever
This is partly UX and doesn't have to be like this. Cockpit systems could make this a lot easier to select VORs and radials without having to manually keep track of frequencies.
After all a successful GPS fix is impossible to accomplish by a human given the raw receive data, which is why it's all automated inside the receiver. We can optimize the hell out of VORs as well. And only people flying ancient aircraft still have to do the thing.
In fact it probably would be great to add some optional authentication signal to it, as even a VOR can be prone to jamming or spoofing.
Fortune may have something to do with it.
Like copper land communications that cost billions to establish over almost 100 years, are extremely resilient and can be repaired by anyone with a ladder and pair of pliers. They're being ripped out across Europe and the US because the private companies they were sold to want to shrug maintenance to squeeze out a little more profit.
It's just not your fortune.
That is untrue. The news is full of stories of people who are right now being forced-off hard line connections that they want and will pay for. The choice is being removed, which is not a fair market.
But, telling any group of people that "they are the only ones" is gas-lighting. Systematic lies to marginalise people was central to the Purdue Pharma opioid scandal and to the British Post Office scandal - telling people "You're the only one" when a problem is evidently extensive should be a very serious fraud.
> don't generate income to pay for their upkeep
When many private companies took on telecommunications properties they did so under obligations to maintenance of infrastructure, availability and reliability standards. If it turns out their choices of technology don't meet those standards of affordable resilience then that's their financial miscalculation and their problem now. Or are you saying that markets are incompatible with national security?