French jet left circling while Corsican controller caught Zs In the high-stress and safety-critical world of air traffic control, "don't fall asleep" probably comes pretty far toward the top of the rule book, and yet that's apparently the reason for the landing delay of an Air Corsica Airbus A320 this week. The French jet departed from Paris Orly late on September 15 and was scheduled …
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In the words of Asterix in Corsica:
"I've got a job for you"
"Not only you're a renegade, but you're even rude"
Long ago - a coworker security guard in a residential was a full time foreign student at Northeastern University in Boston, while also working 2 full time jobs. His schedule left him zero time for sleeping. It was not exactly a miracle - he was in a continuous heightened mental state of being 1/3 asleep, sort of. But then one night the fire alarms went off in the building, woke up all the residents, and brought the fire department. Fortunately it was a false alarm. But the Fire Dept needed to get into the office to turn off the fire alarm, and he was asleep in the office and had locked the door from the inside ...
On the other side of the pond, it was ATC who were trying to raise a flight deck crew...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4jndzj9wjo
"Pay attention. Spirit 1300 traffic off your left wing by six mi— or eight miles, 747. I'm sure you can see who it is. ... Keep an eye out for him — he's white and blue"
Trump was enroute to hob nobbing with royalty.
The article in The Telegraph has a 757, and not a 747 as a background to the audio clip - ignoring that (may be that image was selected by AI), there is a map showing the planned and actual routes of the two aircraft. Looks like after Spirit 1300 changed course, they were running parallel with a separation of about 10 miles...
Note: some parts of The Telegraph site are behind a paywall/may be geo-fenced.
Long in tooth British heavy metal band Saxon have just had an idea for updating one of their classics.
"We've got a Airbus coming down in the night
There's no power, there's no runway lights
Radio operator, try to get a message through
Tell the flight deck La Corse has no lights
There's no power, what do we do?
Airbus coming down in the night
Try to get a message through"
https://genius.com/Saxon-747-strangers-in-the-night-lyrics
Nothing to do with IT or ATC, this...
One remembers Saxon, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden etc. and still listen when time and company permits. Still have the long chain on the keys and wallet. Still wear denim occasionally. Ditched the leather..mistake?
The intro to that Nazareth track gave me a different earworm. Best version of that song I've come across so far...
Just sayin'
Nothing to do with IT or ATC, this...
One remembers Saxon, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden etc.
Bruce Dickinson piloted Iron Maiden's chartered aircraft during some tours, so, a somewhat weak link to ATC and Iron Maiden...
For the uninitiated this is a great listen: One of Dave Gunson's after dinner speeches I believe
I recall a flight out of Spain from a regional airport. It was the last flight and some elderly holiday makers were fussing about where they sit and where their luggage went. The pilot came out of the cabin and addressed the passengers; "we have 10 minutes until they close this airport and if you don't sit down and strap in, you'll be sleeping on this aircraft, trust me this is Spain and they WILL turn the lights off in 10 mins".
Conversely, I also recall working late in Ireland and explaining to the customer that I had to catch a flight. He said don't worry I'll call the airport and have your flight delayed, my brother in law runs the place. I don't know what they told the other passengers but when I arrived I got a lot of angry stares.
I've never flown a plane in my life but I've done enough travelling to small remote airports to know one implemented solution.
Small airports and landing strips are each allocated their own traffic frequency which, in the absence of a controller, no-one but the pilots and an automatic circuit monitor. If you want to land at Woop Woop you tune to the frequency and any pilots working the airfield essentially do their own ATC.
If it's night and the lights are off, transmitting three dots of carrier signal (Morse 'S') causes the circuit to activate the landing lights for fifteen or so minutes.
A320s don't go to landing strips that tiny - at least, not with passengers on board.
This was a scheduled flight, yes it's running late but ATC knew that already so there's no excuse whatsoever.
There's also no excuse whatsoever for there only being one ATC on duty, so that's two people needing to be sanctioned.
I'm looking forward to reading the official report
Another solution Flaming Toilet Rolls Light Up Remote Airstrip but burning bidets probably wouldn't fly. ;)
