Russia’s announcement before ICAO’s November Air Navigation Conference that it intends to mandate that all aircraft on the Russian civil register carry, by January 2018, that country’s Glonass system or combined Glonass/GPS equipment but not GPS or other foreign GNSS as a stand-alone system (see AIN, November, page 48) met resistance from the international community during the November gathering. Foreign-registered aircraft flying in Russian airspace would be exempt.
A number of ICAO member nations and international groups filed discussion papers at the conference expressing concern about Russia’s proposal. However, none could deny Russia’s right, under the UN’s and ICAO’s charters, to impose mandates on user equipage within its own territory. At best, other delegates could only point out the undue premature costs that GNSS mandates could impose on operators at a time when the world’s GNSS infrastructure is slowly expanding its coverage and its planned capabilities for the combined use of multi-frequency constellations for complete global interoperability plus greatly improved performance.
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