Kind of blows my mind how primitive this whole system still is. Audio quality is really bad. They're sending instructions by voice. The way they know who is speaking is by just saying their callsign with every message.
I want you to very carefully consider the better options.
Perhaps they type instructions? And hope someone reads them?
Perhaps they drag and drop vectors? Then what, a radial menu with emergency modal screens?
Or maybe they click some buttons, forcing the occasional look away from the screen?
Maybe AI could do it all?
For this, voice is perfect. We have been following instructions by voice since humans could grunt. We do not require anyone to look away from the screen (ATC) or look down from the window outside (pilot) for any reason.
We do not require rebroadcast because everyone can hear and take initiative if required.
By what interface, specifically, should someone required to fly an airplane interact with ATC while flying that airplane? By what interface should someone who needs to see where everyone is all the time be able to contact that pilot that cannot look away from the world outside ever and cannot use their hands for anything but flying at a critical time?
As a commercial pilot, your response is a little glib and kind of ignores the meaningful advances that have been made with D-ATIS, ADS-B In, CPDLC, DUATS, XM weather, etc. Voice is absolutely not perfect, analog FM audio often comes through garbled, pilots have to wait their turn on a busy single-user channel for timely information, etc.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the complexities that will come from full integration of drones and eVTOL into the national airspace, which will absolutely swamp a one-speaker-at-a-time analog FM comms system.
Just a nit, but aircraft/airport communications use AM not FM. This is deliberate, because FM's "capture effect" would mask other transmissions that inevitably occur when two parties randomly press PTT at the same time. With AM, you'll hear a tone, which is the difference frequency between the two transmitters, so you'll know that somebody missed something, and it will probably be repeated. If it were FM only, it would be less obvious that some communications were missed.
Yeah I probably over reacted. But the knee jerk reactions I've seen to some perfectly reasonable systems just wear you down.
You raise good points but I would be very surprised to see digital data streams ever replace voice, and drone control is just a completely different problem. But as you say we'll see.
> I want you to very carefully consider the better options.
How about digital HD audio at least? In parallel with legacy analog audio.
The next step is visual alerts for pilots if the ATC tries to call _them_. You know, like our phones can do for nearly 150 years.
Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a major stumbling block for me.
> Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a major stumbling block for me.
FWIW (and this may not be applicable to you, or you may already be doing it) I found that listening to ATC via LiveATC for my home airport during my car commutes really helped me with radio skills.
If you don't commute, I'd still suggest just listening when you're not in a cockpit and don't have to worry about flying.
Listening to specific airports I was familiar with really helped.
You make a strong case for voice, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate their argument, they never said voice should be replaced.
Here’s some ideas:
1. A data side channel
2. Use it to send originator for each message, have unique note on other end per sender so they don’t need to check visually, but also show on their display so corrupted or suspicious sender can be verified, in desperate circumstances (rather than the current case of “that cannot be done at all”).
3. Digital audio, allowing actual high quality audio, which we know does improve comprehension, which should not be optional in this context.
4. Take some lessons from modern coms systems on how to handle overlapping coms, plus the extra bandwidth from digital, so overlapping coms is handled gracefully (I realise the realtime nature prevents being too clever, but perhaps blocking all but the first to speak and playing a tone if you’re being blocked), perhaps with some sensible overrides like atc and anyone declaring an emergency getting priority. Currently overlap obliterates both messages and it’s possible for senders to not even know their message was lost. This has contributed to accidents, whilst basic direct radio transmissions cannot avoid this, smart algorithms with some networking could definitely reduce the failure cases to very rare and extreme scenarios
5. Let atc interact with flight planners on aircraft, show the aircraft’s actual locally programmed flight plan to atc, with clear icons if it differs from the filed plan atc has, and perhaps as an emergency only measure, allow atc to submit a flight plan to the aircraft (not replacing the active plan of course, just as a suggestion/support for struggling pilots, “since you have not understood my instructions 3 times, please review the submitted plan on your flight computer, note how it differs from what you programmed”)
6. Aircraft usually know where they are, and which atc they’re meant to be communicating with, have the data channels talk even when the audio channel is not set correctly. If incompetent pilots forget to switch channel, you can force an alarm instead of launching a fighter jet, or just have a button for “connect to correct atc” and a red light when you’re not on the correct one.
That’s just the ideas I’ve come up with just now. 4. Is probably quite hard to get right, and 5 could add load, so should be done carefully.
But hard to believe the current system is technically optimal, or even vaguely close to optimal.
Admittedly, I know the real reason is that having 1 working system for everyone is better than a theoretically great system that is barely implemented and a complicated mess of handoffs between the 2. But with care they can absolutely improve things, but feels like things are moving a few decades slower than they should be.
I think that the audio we are listening too is from some ground recording station that isn't necessarily near the airport. We aren't listening to a recording of what the pilots heard or what air traffic control hears.
Yup. Audio is sourced from volunteers with home radios & antennas. Quality will be dependant on how far the nearest one was from LAX and their personal setup. Not necessarily representative of quality that the controller/pilot was hearing.
Technically correct...and yet let's not kid ourselves that even with a nice radio and a pair of Bose A30's, it can be hard to tease out exactly what's being said when in a congested airspace.
Right? Just in a car, we know that talking to someone in the car itself has adverse effects on situational awareness, and talking to someone on a phone is much worse than that. But even after all the research and training that goes into human factors in aviation ... we can't do better than confusing, poor quality, AM band party lines during critical phases of flight?
Keep in mind that the person talking and listening to the radio is not the pilot flying the airplane. Pilot and Copilot alternate which job they are doing. It's not the same as the driver of a car talking on a phone.
CPDLC is text messaging between controllers and pilots. It is widely used amongst most carriers. It does not work for time critical situations. Voice and radio is the only solution that will work when you don't have time to type a message.
Talking to someone on the phone who has a birds eye view of the road, other drivers, and the map, and only addresses you to help you drive? in no way possible reduces your situational awareness. I refuse to believe that.
Now idle chatting with coworker Wendy about dinner will take you out of that situation and make you more dangerous.
Is your problem a trust issue with always-updating AWS-hosted randomly-banned silently-breaking framework-rotating modern web apps, or something fundamental with GUI based systems?
I mean, I wouldn’t trust a literal iPad, but I’m not sure if I distrust an entirely figurative iPad.
The problem is fundamentally the fact that it is a visual based system.
It is generally faster to communicate orally and process communication aurally than by text message when the message is short enough and requires immediate attention. This is also why urgent alarms (such as those provided by the Gound Proximity Warning System (GPWS) or Traffic Collision Avoidance System[1] (TCAS) have such a component). Some stall prevention systems are even partially tactile based (making a pretty unmistakable shaking feeling (it is loud as well)).
It is incredibly slow to type and then process that visual information. In addition, it's also just much more reliable.
For time critical situations, it's not a viable option.
[1]: Yes, TCAS has a visual component and many alarms do too, but the RAs are auditory and give specific, to the point, instructions on what to do ("climb", "descend").
Open to suggestions. Keep in mind I've worked on Aircraft control systems and have a very strong opinion on reliability and crew management.
I also note that the budget isn't infinite nor do these aircraft like running electron apps.
Also note that not all (if not most) aircraft are not brand new and so would need all to be retrofitted and re-rerated w/ any new system and every single pilot retrained.
This requirement also includes systems for general aviation pilots and both to be able to sync with each other.
> Also note that not all (if not most) aircraft are not brand new and so would need all to be retrofitted and re-rerated w/ any new system and every single pilot retrained
Ah yes, I forgot, we never introduce new aircraft technology because it's too hard. Too bad we don't, it would be great to fit aircraft, with, say, anti-collision transponders and advanced ground proximity systems. Oh well, my mistake for even bringing it up.
as the video says at the beginning, the audio is sourced from LiveATC, which is a network of volunteers with their own radio equipment [0] who tune in to ATC frequencies and then livestream them.
those volunteers are by necessity not at the airport itself, but some distance away. and the audio is compressed to 16kbps MP3 for livestreaming purposes.
this means the sound quality we're hearing is going to be worse (significantly worse, in some cases) than what the pilots and controllers actually hear.
> They're sending instructions by voice.
I get that it's 2025 and it's tempting to say "everything should be a text message". but remember that there's 2 pilots in the aircraft, the Pilot Flying and the Pilot Monitoring [1].
under normal circumstances, the PM handles talking to ATC (among other duties). but both pilots have headsets that allow them to hear transmissions from ATC. and crucially for the Pilot Flying, they hear those messages without taking their eyes away from actually flying.
modern aircraft do have a text message system of sorts [2] but there is a very good reason why the crucial ATC instruction in this case ("turn right heading 270 immediately") happens via voice and not an ACARS message.
also, it's important to remember that airline pilots in the US have a minimum of 1500 hours of flying time, and pilots flying an A330 on an LAX-Rome route probably have significantly more than that. we're watching a 5-minute video and going "oh it's a bit hard for me to follow this" but for actual commercial pilots this radio chatter is routine and something they have been practicing for years.
There seems to be a lack of imagination in a lot of these replies. Everyone is thinking that the only alternative to voice directions only is text messages? You only need to look at satnav to see one obvious alternative.
It has to do with how ATC needs to be able to communicate with all planes in the air, even ones built 100 years ago. They have to use radio so everyone can hear everyone else. There’s no other technology that is as ubiquitous as radio, so they have to work with what they’ve got. Upgrading to other stuff would be an absolute nightmare, though they are making progress on less critical fronts.
Couldn't comms broadcast in multiple parallel modes, like cell phone traffic?: More clear (probably digital) transmissions in on band, and for backward compatibility, old radio transmissions in another.
I think one of the best things they could add would be an electronic drawing tablet for ATC to draw a flight path on a map and pipe it directly into the pilots EFIS or HUD. It's not fool-proof, but in high density airspace, it seems more efficient to be able to draw a curve and press a button than try to verbally describe it. Of course one major pitfall is you cannot draw in 3D.
and in this case, the pilot loaded the wrong waypoint (likely from another runway) and flew toward it. It's not slower, either. have you ever entered a waypoint into a flight computer? they aren't exactly built for speed.
Making the traffic controller load a flight plan into the plane’s computer merely changes who will make the mistake. If you want to suggest changes, suggest something that actually has a chance of reducing the rate of errors.
Besides, pilots don’t just blindly follow the waypoints on their computer. The pilots would have spent half an hour before they even got in the airplane reviewing the plan for the flight. This includes reviewing the published departure information for the airport. In that briefing they would have specifically noted that the direction they will turn after takeoff depends on which runway the tower tells them to take off from. They cannot necessarily guess which runway that’ll be in advance.
They already have something better than that. It's called a published departure procedure that pilots are supposed to follow. In this case, one of the pilots failed to follow the published departure procedure and came close to being on the next season of Mayday: Air Disaster.
The paths would be repetitive. Wouldn't it be great if, instead of drawing a new path in 3D space every single time someone files a flight plan, someone studied the area surrounding the airport, taking into account obstacles, traffic, the fact that there's a residential neighborhood on one end of the airport that shouldn't be bothered at night, and prevailing wind patterns, and drew all those 3D paths through the sky and published them for everyone to use, so that traffic follows known predictable paths?
And in the case of a deviation, would it be faster to pick up a stylus, draw a new path in 3D space, click send, and wait for a message acknowledging that... or someone yelling "27 alpha turn right heading 270 immediately"?
Like with all voice communications, context is important. There are only a limited number of things normally said and most transmissions are about things that were decided before the flight. Everyone involved is used to the bandwidth limited audio used here. Non-pilots have none of this context and normally have a hard time understanding these transmissions.
For ATC environments the voice data is a series of pre-expected prompts. You could do something different but you would pretty much have to redesign the whole system from scratch without making things significantly more complex. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.
Other than voice how would you send instructions that don't really on changing your focus? I can listen while doing other things. What else would you do?
One of the YouTube commenters contributed some much-needed nuance. JFK Ground added to the confusion by repeatedly refusing to use standard phraseology, and failed to maintain professionalism, getting audibly angry and impatient. Both sides of the radio conversation had problems.
Primitive but has been working well enough for decades is so much better than the prospect of Accenture coming in with their absolutely incompetent bullshit.
There's got to be a better solution surely?