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You've got mail: Go to 8,000 feet
By BILL ADAIR, Times Staff Writer
The Boeing 747 cargo plane neared Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. "Descend 2-4-0-0," the air traffic controller told the pilot, meaning he should descend to 2,400 feet. But the pilot heard the 2 as "to" and believed the plane was supposed to go down to 400 feet. The plane crashed into a hill and exploded, killing all four crew members. That 1989 crash illustrates the shortcomings of radios. Despite tremendous advances in airplanes and air traffic equipment, pilots and controllers still rely on old-style radios and spoken words. "Technology today is the same as it was in World War II -- guys are talking to each other on walkie-talkies," said Tom Moore, the president of Atlantic Coast Airlines, a Virginia-based regional carrier. In Florida, the Federal Aviation Administration has started a new program that allows pilots and controllers to use e-mail for routine messages, freeing radios for more critical conversations. Pilots in the program don't have to read back controllers' commands over the radio. They just push a button marked "ROGER" ("I received your transmission") or "WILCO" ("I will comply.") Pilots and controllers say the program, officially known as "data link," will revolutionize how they communicate. As it expands to other FAA centers and more planes over the next five years, they say it will improve safety and make the air traffic system more efficient. "This is the future," said US Airways pilot John Cox, the top safety official for the Air Line Pilots Association. "Everything about it is positive." The first phase involves the Miami air route center, which handles high-altitude flights over Florida, and 13 specially equipped American Airlines jets. For now, the program is limited to routine commands when controllers make initial contact with a pilot, when they tell pilots to change radio frequencies and when they give pilots a setting for the altimeter, the device that measures a plane's altitude. They can also use it to exchange messages about general topics such as turbulence, delays or a stuck microphone. In the cockpit, the e-mail shows up on a computer screen between the pilots. The screen has long been used for pilots to exchange messages with airline dispatchers. The FAA chose to create a separate e-mail system because it had to be more reliable than the one used by the airlines. If numbers got garbled or deleted in e-mail, the results could be catastrophic -- just as they were with the Kuala Lumpur crash. The program is starting gradually so controllers and pilots can get accustomed to it. Eventually, the FAA plans to use it to tell pilots to change their route, altitude or speed. Of course, controllers and pilots can make mistakes with their computer messages just as they make them on the radio, but the FAA says tests show tremendous accuracy with the new system. The FAA has designed safeguards so pilots and controllers can verify messages before they send them. Most are preformatted, so there shouldn't be typographical errors. Although it's sometimes referred to as an e-mail program, it is not connected to the Internet and should not be vulnerable to hackers. Early reviews of the e-mail system have been good. The FAA hopes to have the program throughout the nation by 2007. But the airlines' economic woes could delay it because the companies may not want to spend the $18,000 to $100,000 needed to equip each plane. "We haven't seen what the efficiency would be," said Moore, the Atlantic Coast Airlines official. "If the efficiency isn't there, we'd be hard-pressed to spend that money." Some pilots have qualms about the program because they like the ability to hear other pilots' conversations with controllers. That "party line" capability allows them to hear about bad weather, turbulence and other problems. Some pilots are also concerned that the e-mail system will keep them too focused on the computer screen. "If you're listening to something, you can be heads-up and looking out the window or monitoring your flight instruments," said Robert Sumwalt, an airline pilot and co-author of Aircraft Accident Analysis. "But if you're having to read something, that's diverting your attention." Martin Cole, a controller at the FAA's Washington air route center and an official with with National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said the new system won't replace the radio for all communications. But it's ideal for repetitive messages. "I have sectors where 80 percent of the airplanes get the same message, day in and day out," Cole said. In one sector, for example, pilots are usually told "Cross Blue Ridge at 1-5 thousand, 250 knots." Pilots often ask that those words be repeated because they didn't hear them clearly. "We're plagued with sound quality problems," Cole said. With the new system, instead of having to say those words to every pilot, Cole will simply push a few buttons. A pilot will have no doubt about the speed or altitude because they will appear on the screen. That will free the pilot to handle unusual situations on the radio, Cole said. -- Staff writer Bill Adair can be reached at (202) 463-0575 or adair@sptimes.com.
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