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Air Traffic Controller Lands Stricken Plane By SMS
There's a new reason to hope that the no-cell-chatter bill now under consideration in the US doesn't bring with it a Faraday-cage mandate, and that reason is landing safely. Reader ma11achy writes with an excerpt from a scary story (with an SMS-based happy ending) from the Irish Times: "Five people on a flight from Kerry to Jersey received mobile phone text instructions from a quick-thinking air traffic controller when he guided them in to a safe landing at Cork, after the plane lost all onboard electrical power, communications and weather radar soon after take-off from Kerry airport."
Hay r u ok 2 land lol?
Would've been cheaper.
I don't see what the big deal is. People talking on a cell phone is hardly any different than two people talking to each other on the plane. Except you only get (have) to hear one side of the conversation.
If you don't want to hear it, then get ear plugs, plug in your iPod, or just not listen. I mean, seriously, you don't hear people complaining about cell phones at restaurants, yet it is the same concept.
When did flying become a "quiet zone"?
..what would be the point of this act? To reduce passenger annoyance? Great, might as well ban cellphones in cinema halls now.
I think a more sensible legislation would be legalizing poking obnoxious cellphone loudmouths in the eye with pencils..
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I find it hard to believe that something as critical as the electronics system in an airplane would be so prone to cell calls.
My Brother flies an A320 for BA.
They have constant contact via cell phone to their dispatchers. Even tho they require flight passengers to shut down theirs.
Once the shit hits the fan, I guess it would be the first they use to contact Ground for any vectors, weather infromation or whatsoever.
-S
Someone is going to say that complete communication failure is too rare to worry about, and they will be right and wrong.
While the situation described shouldn't effect new communication rules, there are many different ways cell phone communications can be useful. Furthermore, the ability to communicate using cell phones is a deterrent to hijackings. The person in charge of the plane is not certainly in charge of all communications, and thats a good thing.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
(1) Verizon would have charged me for the phone number for the tower - perhaps $2.
(2) Then they would have charged me for each in-bound and out-bound text message - perhaps another $2 in all.
(3) Some texts would likely have been deferred, making it unlikely to be useful for critical, near-real time communications.
(4) And, of course all this would be on top of my $80 per month, 450-minute "Crackberry" plan. (Not including miscellaneous "recovery fees" that they seem to slip onto every bill, every month)
How about reading TFA: "the twin-engined Piper plane ... with four passengers". It wasn't a fucking jumbo jet. That kind of plane is never going to be affected by any "no cell chatter" rules, much less have any "Faraday cage" built into it. And I think an airliner would have multiple multiple communications backups.
Reminds me of the wackos who say cell phones should be allowed in cinemas "in case of terrorist attack".
The only reason Timothy linked this with the cell phone ban on passenger planes is that it is guaranteed to start up a multi-page thread arguing that subject again, reardless of its irrelevance. Too bad he couldn't think of a way to get gun rights or evolution into the story too.
This happens every now and then in Australia for similar sized aircraft in Eastern parts of Australia. It isn't new. You should see the stuff they do when there are lots of aircraft around, they just switch to visual and get them to tilt their wings in response to instructions.
There's a new reason to hope that the no-cell-chatter bill now under consideration in the US doesn't bring with it a Faraday-cage mandate, and that reason is landing safely.
I hope this law never gets passed and I don't care what lie the gov't has to tell to keep cell phones turned off. Planes are already noisy. People who talk on cell phones talk LOUDLY. Add a lot of people in a noisy environment all talking at the same time, and that makes for a lot of noise.
So a 4 passenger light aircraft landed with no electric power. Big whoop. Electrical failure on an aircraft like that means the radios go out, you lose a couple instruments, and that's it. Most of the important instruments for maneuvering are either powered by the pitot static system or an engine driven vacuum pump. Speaking of the engines, their ignition systems are powered by a fully redundant engine driven system and don't require any external electric power.
If the pilot wouldn't have had the cell phone, he would have been given signals from a light gun as he approached the airport. Losing radios isn't exactly all that uncommon, especially in older aircraft, so pilots and controllers have come up with ways to handle the situation.
Sheesh! Air controllers don't land planes, stricken or otherwise. Aircrews land airplanes. The airplane will land (and fly) just fine without an "air controller".
Air traffic controllers _clear_ airplanes to land. This involves traffic de-confliction and statistically improves safety but there are plenty of non-towered airports where the aircrew routinely lands without benefit of Air Traffic Control.
For instance: http://flightaware.com/live/airport/KPUW
At Pullman/Moscow Regional Airport, a non-towered field near Pullman, WA, Horizon Airlines makes almost a dozen arrivals and departures a day _after_ they leave air traffic control.
The controller doesn't land the plane. The controller works with pilots to keep the airspace and runway coordinated and air traffic moving smoothly. That's an essential job, but it doesn't include flying.
After all, there's no way (in a short time) to MacGyver a cell phone SMS to an autopilot. And this plane may not have an autopilot anyhow.
The pilot followed standard lost contact procedures and augmented them with the call to the controller. The controller wisely used SMS when voice was lost.
Anyhow, the article writer's hook for large commercial aircraft is nonsensical since this is a four-seat aircraft and wouldn't fall under those rules anyhow.
It can't be that hard, it's only ones and zeros: http://onesandzeros.tangozulu.biz
I always knew the Sega Master System was an awesome console but this article finally gives it the recognition it deserves! Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to get back to playing Wonder Boy III.
Install a cell phone battery as backup in every plane!
First off, when an aircraft is in an emergency, you can do a lot of things that would otherwise be banned. You save your fanny first, then worry about regulations later.
Second, the reasons given for the cell phone ban appear to be largely misinformed. I know of two: potential interferrence with aircraft equipment, and interferrence with ground cell phone towers.
To demonstrate that cell phones categorically do not interfere with aircraft equipment, in the US, the FAA would require that each cell phone design demonstrate that it does not cause interferrence. Change the design, or have a different design? New demonstration required. Cell phones passing the test would more than likely need some sort of identifying mark showing that they were approved for aircraft use.
Don't like this idea? Perhaps you'd like to fly with someone who can interfere with the aircraft instruments. I can imagine the headlines: "FAA fails to insure airline safety. Cell phone determined to be cause of crash claiming 150 lives!"
As much as I dislike the airlines getting a free ride on their phones being the only ones usable on the aircraft, those phones have been verified not to interfere with other equipment on the aircraft.
The other problem is that ground based cell phones were designed for ground usage. They punch into whatever cell phone towers happen to be in range. As long as the cell phone itself isn't at a higher elevation, it only reaches a limited number of towers. Put it in an airplane, and it reaches a much larger number of towers. Which tower should be handling the call? Who knows?
This might not be too bad for one or two cell phones, but open it up to all cell phones, and significant interference could result.
It is possible to design a cell phone for airborne use. All it takes is money.
One can, of course, legislate this problem, and declare whatever the legislators think will please the electorate the most. But that, of course, does not change the laws of physics.
OK, let me weigh these options. On one hand, there is the one-in-ten-million risk that someday I might need to have a cellphone conversation with ATC to talk me down when my entire panel fails. On the other hand, there is the virtual certainty that I will be sitting next to some compulsive-talking boiler-room operator on every commercial flight from now until eternity. Which to choose, which to choose . . .
SMS does get through when voice can't. Especially since analog AMPS service was discontinued.
Last month I was using SMS to communicate with a friend who was spending a week horse camping in San Mateo County. This isn't exactly Outer Nowhere, but there's a big area of hilly parks west of Silicon Valley with no cell towers. She was camped in a valley, and I couldn't reach her with voice calls, but if I sent her a text message, it would be delivered the next time she rode up to a ridge line and briefly got line of sight to a distant tower. When she sent me a message back, it would queue in her phone until she got connectivity again. So we could communicate, with hours of delay.
When I went out to the horse camp, I couldn't get any service. A year ago, at the same place, I'd get service via Analog Roam, when my tri-band phone dropped back to AMPS. Now that AMPS is history, there's no more service in many remote locations.
It's not that there are no locations for towers in the parks. We could see a nearby radio tower, and rode up to it, but it was a VHF repeater for fire, police, and rescue services. Cell companies could co-locate there if they really wanted to, or were required to provide coverage. But none of them had.
Originally, cellular licenses required the company to provide service in 100% of their area within a certain number of years. But the FCC backed off on that requirement, as "deregulation". This was a mistake.
There have been pretty good rules around for over 60 years regarding what the pilot should do when they can't contact the tower. Similarly the tower has an old red/green light gun for communicating with planes that can't hear.
It's unlikely there was any safety added by the cell phone sms messages. In fact, bypassing the usual no-radio procedures may have compromised safety. There may be some flags dropped on this play.
People's lives in the hands of text messages. As if mobile telephones weren't annoying enough without butchering written languages as well.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
'tween Cork and Kerry airports
I saw the dash go dim,
and me passengers did scream out,
"You better land this plane, man
or the Devil, he may take ye"
Whack fol my daddy-o,
Whack fol my daddy-o,
there's whisky in the jar
I switch to my cell phone,
for my cell phone never fail'd me.
But, the Devil take that cell phone,
for when I called the tower,
that damn'd thing went and dropped me!
If anyone can aid me,
it's controller in the Tower.
Send forth me text message
and direct me to the runway!
METAR text: KAUS 101553Z 21015G21KT 10SM FEW030 SCT250 32/19 A2988 RMK AO2 SLP104 T03170194
Amirite? No. They didn't. The pilot landed the plane. Watching Pushing Tin 50 times != aviation expert. Reword your fucking headline...
good thing the pilot was not from minnesota or washington - he'd get a big fat ticket for texting while operating a vehicle...
There are established procedures for landing with no radio. A light gun with red and green is used so that the tower can signal an aircraft when it is okay to enter final and land.
A private piston-powered aircraft has an electrical failure, and it's Slashdot-worthy news that the pilot managed to get a landing clearance on his cell phone?
Must be a slow news day. This sort of thing happens fairly regularly in the US. Two friends of mine had the same thing happen to them a couple of years ago and managed to re-establish communications via cell phone. No big deal, and certainly not worthy of the front page on Slashdot, which is clearly trying to spin this as some sort of "OMG DONT BANZ TEH SELLFONZ!" propaganda.
It's virtually impossible for any modern airliner to have a total communications failure, much less a total electrical failure. Don't pretend this is some significant occurrence when it clearly isn't.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
Good evening everyone... I just flew in from Kerry...and boy are my thumbs tired! ba dum bump
You have used two inches of Sellotape. Bless you, my child!
Stick Men
I've been in the army for a number of years and it never cease to amaze how sometimes cellphones can be quite a reliable way of communications. I've been into thick and dense jungles and where conventional army equipments(signal sets) would fail, our back up for communicating with our comrades would be our cell phones. We were once separated from the main troops and I tried contacting my buddies via the signal sets issued to the signaler, to no avail. I whipped out my cell phone, dialed my buddy's number, and because of that, my men and I managed to find our way to the main body.
im in yr avyonikz, nom nom on teh wirez
hmm, gud thng the flyt stwrdess did not advce dem to turn-off der celphones. lol.
There was a radio problem with an helicopter. The helicopter was able to ear but not emit. The controler asked the pilot to call him by phone. This happened near Paris a few years ago.
Here is a perfect example of poor journalism. No air traffic controller ever landed an airplane in his/her life. The PILOT lands the airplane!
Landing an airplane with a communications failure is simple. After all, many small airplanes don't even have communications and have no need for it.
Every pilot is trained on how to land at a major airport without communications (it involves light signals). Obviously, some newspaper reporter had too much time on his hands on a slow news day and had to invent a story.
Signed,
A commercial pilot
with an SMS-based happy ending
And here I thought phone sex was a waste of time.
This reminds me of a problem they had back in the late 60s (I think) where Dallas Love Field (no DFW then) experienced a complete communications power blackout while many planes were in line for landing. During the black out (about 5 minutes), planes continued to land, seemingly on their own to the tower's amazement. As it turned out, a Dallas police helicopter that was near the airport had taken up the control tower duties, directing the planes in the circuit to touchdown.
..and everything, but, what's that sms'd exchange going to cost the hero? I have a rough over/under of 5,000..