61–70 of 104 posts
Government shutdown. ATC are not being paid. Sort your country out!
Who are you yelling at? Do you think the Trump administration reads Hacker News? What do you expect the average American taxpayer to do to fix a government shutdown?
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. There's got to be a better solution surely?
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?
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. There's got to be a better solution surely?
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. W…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't speak to the first question, but as to the second, correct, US air traffic controllers are not currently being paid. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/travel/shutdown-air-traff... . [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-air-... . [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-traffic-...
Why are they turning up for work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. W…
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 in…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They said they had traffic in sight in response. As in "yes I see them". I believe their avoidance maneuver was a climb change.
If “in response” means replying back to tower on tower’s frequency, then no. After the lady on tower frequency told them about traffic (twice), they came in on departures frequency (it was a fresh contact, they started with “good afternoon, American 4 with you”) and said they have traffic in sight. Edited after I rewatched the video: 1. Tower handed them off to departures. 2. They said bye and stopped listening to to…
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. There's got to be a better solution surely?
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. W…
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.
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. There's got to be a better solution surely?
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.