
Pilots, air traffic controllers shifting to text messaging - jonbaer
http://phys.org/news/2016-09-air-traffic-shifting-text-messaging.html
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unsignedint
This tremendously helps international airspace where English is not native. I
have once heard Narita tower kept interpreting comm from plane as a statement
as opposed to request, until finally other plane clarified the tower that the
plane is actually requesting it.

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ethanbond
Probably a stupid question, but is English the de facto flight control
language everywhere? Or is it just the safest fallback between otherwise
incompatible language backgrounds?

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Bdiem
Defacto it is, but spoken with many a accent. Try listening to some for
yourself to get a feel for it -
[http://www.liveatc.net/](http://www.liveatc.net/)

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f_allwein
Makes you wonder wy they did not do this 10 or 20 years ago. Or are there any
obvious disadvantages?

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ethanbond
Probably just that interactive text conversations have become "native" only
recently.

My mother more or less refused to text up until 4 or 5 years ago. It had more
to do with the totally novel paradigm than with any piece of the technology
used to implement it.

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Bdiem
It also has to do something with radio (voice) frequencies beeing at max
capacity in high traffic areas.

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squeed
This is especially important in managing the North Atlantic airspace, where
there is no radar coverage at all. Planes request clearance and track changes
via data messages.

There is a cool video detailing the process - and the software used to manage
it - here:
[https://youtu.be/EJTjwW5ZYas?t=805](https://youtu.be/EJTjwW5ZYas?t=805)

