Slashdot Mirror
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.
..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..
[Slashdot Comments We Liked]
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
The Mythbusters already exposed this as a load of crap.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
1 - People have an annoying habit of yelling into their cellphones for no good reason.
2 - Maybe you don't hear complaints about people on cell phones in restaurants because you're too busy yelling into your cellphone.
3 - Passengers are packed pretty tightly into those airplanes.
If you don't want to hear it, then get ear plugs, plug in your iPod, or just not listen
You're louder than my music, moron. Get off the f***ing plane.
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"?
I think it would be a non-issue if people talking on cell phones would use a normal level of volume to speak. It becomes a problem when people are practically yelling on the phone and can be heard three rows down the airplane. Most normal face to face conversations on an airplane are barely audible b/c of the background noise on the plane.
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
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.
As others have already pointed out: it is, my friend, oh well, it is.
Which is even worse. I find it much more easy to ignore a completely understandable talk between two people. With just half of the communication present, some nerve tickles all the time and tries to make sense of all this gibberish.
Thank you, but I get seriously irritated when not hearing what goes on around me. I dislike ear plugs and I dislike the wet atmosphere they generate inside my ears; earphones, on the other hand, induce very discomforting pain (the anatomically more suitable earphones are so sound-proof that I can't use them in public; see above).
In my country, this is mainly because nobody uses the cell phone while in a restaurant. If they have to, they go outside. Very polite.
Why should it become a terroristic attack on my ears and--maybe more importantly--on my intellect? Flying is uncomfortable enough as it is, no need for additional yelling.
The Mythbusters, while highly entertaining, would not win any prizes for designing good experiments. They are entertainers, not scientists, and you could poke huge holes in quite a high percentage of their endeavours, so I wouldn't cite them as a meaningful reference.
Oh no... it's the future.
Since rhe airline industry and TSA have, to date, provided not a single study or even shread of evidence thar cells pose any threat, I'd give the Mythbusters the edge on this one.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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
Carnegie Mellon University good enough for you?
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
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.
Give it up, friend. People who are determined to do whatever they please whenever they please and have a "screw the rest of the world" attitude will always attack anyone who dares question their right to do so.
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.
'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!
You have used two inches of Sellotape. Bless you, my child!
Stick Men
Cell phones, certainly GSM cell phones *DO* interfere with aircraft communication systems.
It was a dark and stormy night (OK, it wasn't stormy, just light rain, with a cloud base at 600 feet, and it was very dark). I was returning from the UK with a friend in his light aircraft. It was my friend's first IFR approach for real - in the clouds, at night. The air was smooth though, so the conditions weren't too bad for a first time.
Unfortuantely he had forgotten to turn off his phone.
ATC cleared us for the approach, giving us a final vector to the localiser (the localiser is what gives you horizontal guidance on an instrument landing) - the vector is a heading ATC gives you such that you intercept the localiser course sufficiently far out on the approach and at a shallow enough angle that it's practical to start your approach. Just as the localiser needle started moving towards the centre, *all* audio was blocked by this noise:
Bip-bip bip-bip b b b bip-bip bip-bip brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
It was very loud and very distracting. We could no longer hear any instructions from ATC. Fortunately, I could take over flying the approach while my friend hunted down his cell phone and turned it off, and fortunately, while this racket was going on, ATC didn't give us any new instructions.
If you have a GSM phone, chances you'll know exactly the sound I describe above. They are terrible at interfering with all kinds of stuff.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows