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."

Oh dear

Hay r u ok 2 land lol?

Re:Oh dear

BRB, cnt talk, crshing.

Re:Oh dear

haha what u crshing on she not into u lolz

Once again..

..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..

Re:Once again..

You can be thrown out of a theatre for talking on your cell phone (or having it ring). Perhaps we should indeed have the same rule for airplanes.

thats standard procedure

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

"landing safety" -- bullshit

Timothy (The "editor") wrote "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."

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.

Non-Story

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.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

Why didn't he just call them?

He did. FTA:

Eventually he [the pilot] managed to contact Cork [the air traffic controller] on his phone, telling them about his problem and his intention to approach the airport from the sea.

He then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

Maybe this will be a boon for women in air traffic control, most can type a sms out faster than most people could speak it.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

They can also start recruiting air traffic controllers right out of junior high school.

"U r clr 4 laning lol"

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

Bring back Morse code - even faster than texting [youtube.com].

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

I don't type much. Just under 50 texts a day on average.

I also don't read /. much. I probably hit F5 no more than 50 times a day.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

from TFA:

He then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

What would make a phone lose audio but not SMS ability?

Re:

... a moving vehicle - going in and out of range.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

Because cellphone voice communications requires a constant link between the cellphone and the tower, where SMS is transmitted in bursts when the cellphone and the tower can hear each other.

You'll find in situtations where the cell towers are jammed with calls of people calling each other to see if everything is OK after a major storm, a SMS will get through even if you can't make a call.

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

Which is why texting is free for contract phones in the US. Dang it!

Re:Why didn't he just call them?

What would make a phone lose audio but not SMS ability?

Shite signal. An SMS is sent in a single frame of GSM data. Audio needs 50 frames per second.

Re:Whats the tech hubub about cell phones?

The Mythbusters already exposed this as a load of crap.

Re:Whats the tech hubub about cell phones?

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.

Re:Whats the tech hubub about cell phones?

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.

Re:Whats the tech hubub about cell phones?

Carnegie Mellon University good enough for you? [sciam.com]

Re:What?

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.

Re:What?

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.

As others have already pointed out: it is, my friend, oh well, it is.

Except you only get (have) to hear one side of the conversation.

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.

If you don't want to hear it, then get ear plugs, plug in your iPod, or just not listen.

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).

I mean, seriously, you don't hear people complaining about cell phones at restaurants, yet it is the same concept.

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.

When did flying become a "quiet zone"?

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.

Re:What?

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.