[andkenneth]

No one is using nanometers in aviation navigation. Quite a few aviation systems are case insensitive or all caps only so you can't always make a distinction.

In fact, if you say "miles", you mean nautical miles. You have to use "sm" to mean statute miles if you're using that unit, which is often used for measuring visibility.

[ianferrel]

Sure but I could imagine some kind of software failure caused by trying to divide by a distance that rounded two zero because the same location was listed in two databases that were almost but not exactly the same location. In fact I did when I first read the headline, then realized that it was probably nautical miles.

That would be roughly consistent with the title and not a totally absurd thing to happen in the world.

[scarlehoff]

This is exactly what I thought q when I first read the title.

[jp57]

Indeed, having locations internally represented in software with a resolution of nanometers is as ridiculous as having your calendar's internal times represented as milliseconds since some arbitrary moment more than fifty years ago!

[anigbrowl]

Indeed, but you can easily imagine a software glitch over what looks like a single location but which the computer sees as two separate ones.