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The plane, it's 'splained, falls mainly without the brain: We chat to boffins who've found a way to disrupt landings using off-the-shelf radio kit

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

The article says "The attacks described in the paper are of particular concern during CAT III operations, where the decision height is low, making it possibly too late to regain altitude and try to land again".

But a moment's thought would suggest that there is no time at which it's too late to go around. Think about it: a moment before touchdown you are moving fast enough to be flying (although sinking). The runway is long enough to gather enough speed to fly. Therefore if you're about to touch down at the end of the runway you have the whole length available to accelerate to a speed sufficient to climb and go around.

The only reason the attacks are of more concern during CAT III operations is that under low visibility conditions the pilots are unable to double check their position using their eyes until moments before touchdown. So if you had an attack that could move the apparent glide path 200 metres north, say, you could line an aircraft up on the Bath road instead of LHR Runway 27R.

(Cat IIIb is designed so that the pilot doesn't see the runway until he's 50ft above it, and he can only see a few hundred feet ahead -- i.e.. one or two plane lengths. 50ft is roughly twice the height of a lamppost, so you can see the problem, even if the pilot can't).

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