wallywam1: Gyrfalcon: manitobamadman: FTFA, "Prank calls to control towers are not that uncommon" um... why ?

Yeah, about that....

"Ha ha, let's call the tower and tell them the plane's been hijacked! Won't that be a riot!"
or
"Hey I know! Let's pretend the plane's on fire and get everyone out to the runway, and then when we land we'll go AHA! PUNKED!"

I just don't see it.

You're either A) a teenager, in which case it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY stupid, but you may somehow be so immature as to actual think it's funny or B) an actual adult trolling air traffic control, in which case you should be drawn, quartered, burned at the stake, and have all your ashes shot from a canon.

Actually, even.

wallywam1: Gyrfalcon: manitobamadman: FTFA, "Prank calls to control towers are not that uncommon" um... why ?

Yeah, about that....

"Ha ha, let's call the tower and tell them the plane's been hijacked! Won't that be a riot!"
or
"Hey I know! Let's pretend the plane's on fire and get everyone out to the runway, and then when we land we'll go AHA! PUNKED!"

I just don't see it.

You're either A) a teenager, in which case it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY stupid, but you may somehow be so immature as to actual think it's funny or B) an actual adult trolling air traffic control, in which case you should be drawn, quartered, burned at the stake, and have all your ashes shot from a canon.

You're either a) new to Fark and never met me before or b) missed the part where I said "I just don't see it" because I was pretty much agreeing that pranking air traffic control was the dumbest thing ever; and in either case c) you have the sense of humor of a sack of gravel and need to work on that before you post here any more.

Ed Finnerty: ♫Smooooke in the cockpit,
A fire in the sky...♫

Dammit! That was the first thing I thought of.

shakes tiny fist

Lots of fail on this one. If I'm getting smoke in the cockpit (which I have) I'm going to make damn sure ATC knows exactly who I am, and I'm not "requesting" anything. Declaring an emergency *gives* me priority and if I know what my plan is (landing runway X, for instance), I'm telling ATC and their job is to deal with that, not with me.

95629: Shortening or dropping parts of your callsign has caused countless errors, confusion, etc in aviation. This is becoming more and more prevalent at regional airlines due to them hiring inexperienced pilots who don't know why its important and having ineffective training that doesn't teach its importance.

I agree that it's a problem, but I completely disagree that it's linked to inexperience. Some of the worst radio discipline I've ever witnessed has been coming from the flight decks of major carriers.

X15: costermonger: Lots of fail on this one. If I'm getting smoke in the cockpit (which I have) I'm going to make damn sure ATC knows exactly who I am, and I'm not "requesting" anything. Declaring an emergency *gives* me priority and if I know what my plan is (landing runway X, for instance), I'm telling ATC and their job is to deal with that, not with me.

95629: Shortening or dropping parts of your callsign has caused countless errors, confusion, etc in aviation. This is becoming more and more prevalent at regional airlines due to them hiring inexperienced pilots who don't know why its important and having ineffective training that doesn't teach its importance.

I agree that it's a problem, but I completely disagree that it's linked to inexperience. Some of the worst radio discipline I've ever witnessed has been coming from the flight decks of major carriers.

You two are the ones that fail, for apparently not even knowing one of the most basic rules of flying.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

In. That. Order.

This.

wallywam1:
Gyrfalcon: manitobamadman: FTFA, "Prank calls to control towers are not that uncommon" um... why ?

Yeah, about that....

"Ha ha, let's call the tower and tell them the plane's been hijacked! Won't that be a riot!"
or
"Hey I know! Let's pretend the plane's on fire and get everyone out to the runway, and then when we land we'll go AHA! PUNKED!"

I just don't see it.

You're either A) a teenager, in which case it is incredibly, INCREDIBLY stupid, but you may somehow be so immature as to actual think it's funny or B) an actual adult trolling air traffic control, in which case you should be drawn, quartered, burned at the stake, and have all your ashes shot from a canon Sony Alpha.

FTFY

X15: You two are the ones that fail, for apparently not even knowing one of the most basic rules of flying.Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.In. That. Order.


Jesus, where did I say that getting on the radio is the most important thing in any situation?

I stand by my point. If you have time to communicate, you have time to communicate correctly.

vinn01: The recording was "This is 5912. Emergency, smoke in cockpit, roll trucks, please". There was no "request", however there was also no "declare".That's a poor way to declare an emergency and state your aircraft's intentions. Also, no report of souls on board or pounds of fuel? Since the controller obviously didn't hear the emergency transmission clearly, he would have no way of knowing if it was a C172 or a B747 Heavy. Makes a big difference in the response./ squawking 7700 should have been on the checklist. fail.// controller should have been relentless in trying to clarify that transmission. "Say again!" worse fail.

Yeah, the hint of anything going wrong generally gets them very intent on getting more information. That's their job. Brushing off any suggestion of smoke or fire just doesn't compute.

X15: Who says he had time to communicate?

He made a call. Hell, he even said "please". But he omitted the one word that would've prevented the asshole controller from thinking it was a hoax.

He had time to get off what should of been a sufficient notification to ATC, he probably didn't have time to give a 100% correct call.

What he said should've absolutely been sufficient to notify ATC that *an* emergency is occurring (the controller squarely takes the blame for not responding to that) but it didn't include the information necessary to properly determine *who* is having the emergency. I can't even begin to guess how many times I've shared the last couple digits of a callsign with other aircraft on the frequency. I can completely understand why that call was made the way it was - he'd likely been acknowledging calls all day with that number. But the number alone isn't your ident.

As has been mentioned previously, none of that excuses ATC from flatly ignoring what they heard.

Probably because he was to busy talking with his copilot to go over the checklist and, you know, coordinate how to land the farking plane.

I've never heard of a set of SOPs that have calls going out of the cockpit before the appropriate procedures are initiated. That's the application of the same rule you quoted, by the way. We have to run the checklist (if we have one) before we start getting on the radio.

Carousel Beast: Really? So if I have time to yell to someone "Look out!" that means there was time to instead yell "I say my good man, there appears to be a large piano hurtling down from a balcony and is very likely to strike your skull and cause you considerable personal injury; you may wish to expediently move ten feet in a convenient direction."

Or are you just stupid?

Equating proper radio communication with verbosity is.. Ironic.

A more valid comparison, Carousel Beast, would be calling 911 from your cell phone, saying "a house is on fire, send fire trucks!" and hanging up. You're not very many words away from all the info they need, but the location is a rather important omission.

Thunderboy: The pilot did state his flight number. How many "5912s" did that controller currently have in the pattern?

Seems unlikely that there was more than one, but the controller didn't hear the number correctly because it's not normal to initiate contact with only the flight number. The pilot said "5912" but the controller turned the first part into an airline callsign.. 59 -> United. Wrong, clearly, but understandable, because that's the standard phraseology the controller expected.

If the pilot had actually used his callsign - Acey 5912 - I seriously doubt we'd be hearing about this.

Unfortunately, the ATC didn't hear the number correctly.Still, there is a certain amount of cue diligence one might reasonably expect an ATC to follow through on, particularly in a potential emergency situation like this. The knee-jerk dismissal of the call is the real problem here.

Yeah, that's clearly the bigger issue here, but they're both "real" problems, as the controller evidently thought he was hearing calls from a callsign that was fictitious, as far as he was concerned.