Geodetic Journey

Air navigation differs from the navigation of surface craft in several ways:

Aircrafts travel at relatively high speeds, leaving less time to calculate their position en route. Aircrafts cannot normally stop in mid-air to ascertain their position at leisure. They are safety-limited by the amount of fuel they can carry, there is no in-flight rescue, and collisions with obstructions are usually fatal. So, constant awareness of position is critical for aircraft pilots.

In the past the stars and the sun was used in navigation for approximately positions while the detailed navigation was based on radar and lighthouses. A small error in the grid net would most likely not be detected.

A fundamental part of modern navigation is the geodetic part, the part related to the size and the shape of the Earth as well as the reference grid put forward by geodesy. Navigation today depends heavily on the use of satellite technology, making it paramount that the coordinate system used in the maps are directly related to the one used by the satellites.