Snip: Bill Wrote

I cruise at 600 ft rather than 500 ft
above the even or odd thousand feet, too - for the same
reason, why be where everybody else is?

Wrathall Mark wrote:

This a good point. When you learn to fly it is important to learn to fly
accurately, but once you have flown in the cockpit of a RVSM approved
airliner, it starts to scare you. These things will hold 37000 feet +- about
3 feet for as long as you want. Sooner or later there will be accidents
because the systems put the planes at exactly the same point. Many near
misses in the past were probably avoided because, although the pilots were
trying their hardest to be at the same point, they just weren't that
accurate. I see the cruise reports from our 777's and I have never seen an
altitude reported more than 3" from an IFR level.
Mark Wrathall

One of Burt Rutan's favorite pitches for free flight type navigation is
that it avoids that. I'm not a math major, but I've read that in 3d
space, If we all flew direct & picked altitude at random, we'd have much
lower odds of a midair. Of course you've still got the problem of
congestion at the airport.

Charlie

 
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