This paper, which was presented at an Ordinary Meeting of the Institute held in London on 15 November 1963, sets out to comment on certain aspects of the long-range navigation of civil aircraft. It concentrates on three areas where there seems to be room for improvement: reliability (a failure rate of 1 : 10 is suggested); the integration of navigation information into a single system and display; standardization of navigation facilities so that all aircraft can use the same basic system.

It is concluded that a reliable system is required down to ground level, an indication of reliability should be presented to the pilot, that high reliabilities can be obtained by comparison of ground-based and self-contained aids, that a navigation computer is necessary to reduce the information to a presentable form, and that the use of very low frequencies seems to be the most promising way of developing an aid along these lines.