I love how they actually use 121.5 like they’re supposed to and then ATC tries to get them to switch to other frequencies knowing they can’t be reached on any other frequency.
Lmao I was immediately thinking droid sounds. Apparently Ben Burtt was into amateur radio and made a lot of his sounds with that type of equipment so it makes sense. Really superb way of approaching sound design imo. All the x wing comms are on slightly un-tuned single side band which sounds really cool too.
@@rc2634 no...the point is that kept talking to eachother in french that they will crash...sounding like to cats meowing at eachother...it was more of a joke but we are beyond that :D
Man this was more stressful than many mechanical/other emergencies lol. Inability to communicate across an entire area and with an emergency return to a busy airport, feels way more dangerous than someone with engine failure or whatever clearly communicating intentions and getting in safely.
It would have been Much more harrowing and dangerous if it wasn't a stuck mic, but just dead silence, with all radios out including the Ident radio. there would be no way for tower to know what was going on. The pilot would have to navigate himself to a safe area and do left turns to indicate the problem and wait for the airport to visual signal him that it is okay to come back and land. You can imagine the possible errors. mistakes and bad timings that could lead to. Tho to be honest I expect the pilot to use a cell phone to call the tower, lol.
@Taran Ainsley Which is why you always read back what ATC tells you. This way ATC knows you got the message. Thus this needn't be a big problem for anyone but the stricken aircraft. As long as ATC can get the message out that there is an aircraft on frequency with a broken radio/stuck mic. Good thing is the stricken aircraft squawked 7600 letting ATC know they had radio problems. ATC at that point closed all operations and handled it as an emergency. As a pilot, they really have to trust that ATC/tower/ground got things under control for them at that point so they can land "deaf".
I imagine. If you parked in a stable turn pattern to stay out of trouble. A fighter would show up and waggle it's wings at you to literally guide you to the flight-slope after an hour or so. Total loss of radio isn't crippling, just really inconvenient.
@@glenmcgillivray4707 You are sort of correct, kind of. Sort of. But, without a radio, how would you even know which part of the sky would be safe to circle around in? From a "will the plane fall out of the sky on its own" perspective, yes, radio failure is largely a non-issue. HOWEVER, from a "I hope nothing bad happens before we unload the passengers" perspective, total radio failure is probably the single most dangerous scenario outside of a hijacking. At the speeds these things travel, you have seconds to spot another plane, figure out if your paths will intersect or not, decide what to do, and then convince a multi-ton aircraft to do it. Imagine this: You are driving a motorcycle, so you must maintain at least a minimum speed. For "reasons" normal driving conditions mean you can only see about 4 seconds in front of your vehicle, 2 or 3 seconds to the side, and are almost completely blind to the rear. Really, if you can't make contact with ANYONE, your best shot is to squawk "No Radio", circle for a while to give ATC time to notice and start clearing the area, and then line up for the longest, straightest approach path you can find and trust ATC to clear your path down. Not to disrespect your "wait for a jet escort" idea. It's a reasonable one. I just don't know where the trade off between "waiting for directions" and "land before I run into anything or cause someone else to run into something" lies.
*Thankfully this happened at the least busy time in New York!!* Anyway, Kudos to pilots and controllers for a nice cooperation to keep everything flow safe!
It's always a pleasure to listen to an excellent job on everyone's part. I just can't understand how, with our modern technology, the radio communications have not improved. Blocked calls are bad enough.
Isn't it bad idea to give a clear to land to the #2 plane? What if more radio gets blocked and say the RF doesn't get off the runway? Why wouldn't they give proceed but not cleared until you hear from us? Seems like that was a bad idea.
These guys are incredible. I’ve watched several of these and out of all, a radio failure is by far the scariest. Not only did tower handle it but he stayed two steps ahead every time. The guy is a genius. You know which one im talking about!
@@rkan2 121.5 is the emergency frequency, also known as guard. everybody has to monitor to it, and inadvertently, you'll transmit on it at some point in your career. which will usually be answered by meows, Yyou are on guuuaaaaardddddd, etc by morons. it's regularily used for such dumbfuckery, blocking the frequency of its actual use.
Stuck mic is one of the most frustrating situations for controllers. Years ago at DEN TRACON watched a Texas International DC9 barrell towards the front range at 12000 feet in a right downwind to runway 8 at Stapleton nighttime IFR with a stuck mic. About 20 seconds prior to potential impact with terrain. Pilot reversed course and landed safely. The TRACON pucker factor was pretty high! Passengers never knew how close they came to tragedy.
@Jo Fox..Yes, it may seem scary, but if you stick to your planned departure procedures, we will anticipate your actions and clear the way. The procedures are set up, so ATC protects your filed routing to your destination. And when you get there they know that the aircraft will hold over the airport, until such time to execute an approach nearest to his ETA.
Wow , amazing lesson, i tought that you have to completly forget about fly and concentrate all the crew attention over the radio issue, and , in some cases , ask to passengers for help. You are a wise men.
I don't know if it's my overly cautious nature, but when I was flying light aircraft, I ALWAYS carried a handheld radio and a handheld garmin with altimeter, even had the gps programmed with all airports in country. My instructor and I once did a full 200km flight with only these to test effectiveness (covered instruments, not off), worked brilliantly as a backup - completed the full flight on them.
I'm still a student pilot, so I haven't invested too much into equipment at this point, but I do plan on keeping a handheld radio with me for exactly these cases. Technically, that wouldn't actually be legal, though. Germany has some weird laws and handheld radios may only be used by ground stations. You can't even have it as emergency backup - it's the presence of the radio itself that is illegal, not its use. I'll probably keep one anyway. If I don't need it, nobody will know. If I do need it... glad to have it.
@@Yotanido You can also use your phone if not too high. Keep the tower numbers with you at all time. If bad reception, use SMS and text a friend that can relay.
@@Yotanido What if you jumped on a Radio Operators License? I have an Extra class license, you pay $10 here and keep them for life. Technically its a Ham Radio License, but still it would justify carrying a radio even if the Air frequencies are outside the Ham bands. My radio can transmit on Ham bands, Air bands, M.A.R.S and more so it would be hard for them to ping me for it. Is that a possibility for you?
After reading a bunch of the comments complaining about how antiquated the radios are in aviation I remembered something I was told in the past. Now, this was for public service channels rather than aviation but the reason for using analog over digital was because of range capabilities and even when the channel was blocked there was a chance that a blocked communication would be heard appropriately anyway. Because digital signals require higher bandwidth and strength to be readable it reduces both the distance and the ability to overcome someone blocking the channel with a hot mic, or radio failure like this. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong but I think I am remembering correctly.
No expert in aviation, but with some background in electronics, signals and waves, I can affirm that, on the contrary, digital frequency-modulated signals should use less bandwidth that analog FM or AM. A digital signal gains a lot of signal-to-noise ratio, so it can be decoded pretty good in noisy environments where an analog transmission would not be readable. In terms of 'strength', that would depend on the power output of the transmitter and frequency. Higher frequencies can be blocked more easily by obstacles while lower frequencies are less sensitive (thus, more far-reaching). Normally, lower frequencies are reserved for AM comms and analog-FM comms, that's why they are usually more far-reaching (but noisier). While a digital signal uses a very narrow frequency-band, in order to represent a broader audio bandwidth, it has to increase its bitrate, which means it must use a higher frequency. I believe the problem with aviation comms is standardization: common frequencies and equipment must work seamlessly for all aircraft GLOBALLY, including models from the 60's that still fly.
@@gastonpossel IIRC the reason aviation radio uses AM is that if two people are transmitting on the same frequency simultaneously, with AM you hear both superimposed, making it obvious that someone's being stepped on, whereas with FM the person getting stepped on is completely blocked out with no indication that anyone else was trying to transmit.
No joke but I remember hearing the story of a pilot being vectored in for a landing in IFR conditions after declaring a 7600 squawk using text messages! It was a GA aircraft.
@@spicyweasel they do have text messaging system. It's called ACARS if I'm not mistaken. You can hear in the video the controller ask other plane of same airline to send them ACARS messages. It is mostly used by companies to communicate with their pilots.
@@kerucutgaming2216 Yes I do know about ACARS. But in the situation I described earlier the pilot had to use his cell phone and descend to a better altitude to SMS the tower. I found the video for you. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UQtvi1ijPQ4.html
6:43 in the video the controller say "This is NY Center on GUARD" not "continue on GUARD". I only mention this as I thought it was interesting that it seemed that NY Center were the only one that could talk to them. The TRACON also tried GUARD but with no respons. I also thought it was interesting that AA2234 were still able to hear the controller even after they got a stuck mic on GUARD. How does that work? 1:22 in the video you can hear one of the pilot say "It's stuck. We have a hot mic. How does that happen?" so they knew almost straight away after they got it the second time. Great job by all and great video as always.
I guess their stuck mic was on and off so they happened to hear NY on 21.5 then mic got stuck for a few seconds again. Happily they were able to communicate at least for a couple vectors back to the airport.
They had multiple radios. Any radio they set to transmit was stuck in transmit. So they set one to receive only, on guard. That let them hear transmissions from controllers. They then tuned another radio to guard, set it to transmit, and shut it off. To talk, they turned it back on and off. They got the stuck mic reports after that because it's a little clumsy to turn the transmitting radio on and off quickly. Once they had a working system, they stuck with it, demanding the controllers keep them on guard rather than trying to coordinate frequency changes.
@@rivalarrival Thanks for that. I was struggling to understand how this situation could occur with what I assumed was multiple radio redundancy. Sounds like it was an unusual enough fault to break that redundancy.
More commonly known as "jamming" in this context. It is one of the downsides of the simple analog radios used in aviation and a big yawning vulnerability in the system.
@@DaveWhoa I'll tell you a story about when I was in the Navy. Stationed on a supply ship, got orders to head out into the Atlantic to do a hide and seek war game with some destroyers and a few aircraft. We were the rabbit and they were the fox. We had a real smart Electronics Tech on the ship and he decided to turn our transmitters into high powered jammers. He had the carpenter make giant reflectors out of 2x4s and aluminum sheeting and he placed them right next to the 20 foot tall antennas, each pointing in a different direction. I'm assuming he increased the power on those transmitters, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, he started broadcasting AC/DC Back In Black album nonstop. Apparently, it worked because about an hour later we get a sat message from the fleet admiral back in Norfolk telling us to knock it off. We never got picked to be the rabbit again.
I love how the priority was also on minimizing disruptions to the operations, and they were already vecoring in the next two aircraft to land before the emergency aircraft was even 5 miles out. And everything worked out.
Well remember, it was the CREW who figured out how to talk to the TOWER, not the other way around. the crew was dealing with an equipment failure but they knew their jobs.
This makes you see how weak is the system by a tiny failure, but I'm glad to know that there's training of all sorts. We had here in Argentina a few months ago a saboteur with a handheld radio impresonating ATC, luckly nothing happened.
Cesar Queti the fact that they could still vector the emergency aircraft and all others in the vicinity is actually a testament to the strength of the system. Notice how they didn’t even have to use light signals to guide him in, and had plenty of resources to maintain contact with the aircraft despite a major radio failure.
I hadn't heard about that one. I probably wasn't subscribed to the channel yet and only watching a few here and there. I'll have to see if I can track it down. Update: found it! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7WKZNGisSqM.html
Just another example of how talented commercial pilots and controllers are. This is a nightmare scenario and it was pulled off safely with just a brief interruption of commercial traffic. Well done to all involved
This radio failure effectively jammed the tower & departure frequencies. The sudden cease of communication, something so natural as expecting a light to turn on by pressing a light switch, is a frightening prospect that one tends to forget.
This is one of the most intense videos I've seen so far. Just wow!! The way ATC handled that was incredible. Great job all around. That was seriously scary
WOW...talk about tough conditions, this really mucked things up......Glad turned out Great..Could have had a different ending for sure....great work by everybody...Kudo's
I've had a similar problem flying another aircraft type departing into London TMA. We solved it by selecting to put the stuck mic to transmit on 123.450 which is usually a shit-chat frequency while monitor our normal frequency on VH2. And when we had to transmit we just selected the stuck mic back to original freq. I don't know if this would've been possible on the 757 or if this was the problem for them but for a stuck mic it should work on most aircraft types.
That's exactly how they handled it, and explains the stuck mic reports they got near the end. It took them a little time to get the transmitting radio off frequency.
I do like how they kept telling him he had a stuck mic well after he and everyone else acknowledges he has a Radio Failure... so even in real life we have those annoying pop up messages.
KJFK TWR: "[...] I'll let you know if he doesn't get off the runway but, wind 040 at 5, runway 4R, cleared to land." Am I the only one who thinks that this is fucked up? There is traffic in front of him so the runway is NOT clear, and he says himself that he doesn't even know if the emergency aircraft is going to vacate the runway on its own! And yet he gives a landing clearance, unbelievable. What if the approaching aircraft suddenly has a radio failure too or switches to the wrong frequency by accident or ANYTHING on short final and can't hear TWR while TWR tries to instruct a go-around? Add bad visibility and boom, unnecessary crash because the USA had to be special again. You should never make your radio a safety critical component. Because as we can see here, it can fail anytime. Correct call would've been: "[...] I'll let you know if he doesn't get off the runway but continue approach runway 04R." That way the pilot is going to fly a missed approach automatically in case he hears no clearance for whatever reason. Clearance should only be given if the runway is CLEAR. This makes my blood boil because this is my LIFE they have in their hands while using dangerous practices and bad phraseology everytime I fly into their airspace.
5:42 AAL2234: "This is the only freq I'm copying anybody on" Then... 7:37 I wonder if JFK TWR could have used Guard instead, since nothing came through anyway.
Seems like an interesting case study in the failure of a complex engineering system. Notwithstanding the fact that it all turned out ok, are there any lessons to be learned from this that might change protocols or aspects of system design?
Using a 1930's radio frequency system for modern air traffic control. Advantage is that everyone hears every transmission, when everyone is following standard radio procedures. Disadvantage is that one stuck mic can ruin everyone's day. Some Electrical/Electronics engineer might have an idea for how to update the system, but it would not be cheap. It would mean updating radios in every ATC center, control tower and aircraft on the planet.
@@fhuber7507 I am one of those electrical engineers, and also a pilot, and I very much prefer human voices over analog AM for reliability and robustness in conditions that make digital radio solutions fall over quickly.
@@VASAviation Espero que no. I'd much rather deal with AM radios under poor conditions like stuck mic than the same than the same with any digital radio system. Y digo esto como ingeniero eléctrico y piloto.
I know at my job some microphones timeout after 60 seconds and will make a loud audible 1 second "beep" if it does ever timeout. I wonder if something like that can be implemented in airplanes.
It always astounds me that people try to call the aircraft with a stuck mic to tell them it’s stuck. When you are transmitting on a VHF radio, the act of transmission cuts off reception. So the ONLY ones who can’t hear you telling them that they have a stuck mic are the ones with the stuck mic. Also the American crew realized it was a hot mic but did nothing about it. They could have switched the radio to an unused frequency so as not to have disrupted the one that they were on.
@@VASAviation Honestly, not really. I imagine there would be some interesting conversation between ATC and surrounding aircraft when a plane goes NORDO. Still really neat video, especially in this specific instance!
I just watched a video yesterday about the things every pilot should have in his bag,............. one of those items was a hand held radio, in case of a radio failure. They are only good for a couple of miles, but better than nothing.
Very interesting to see an hear how such an emergency is handled. I just wondered, do'nt they have an spare portable radio in the cockpit, so if the onboard radios fail, they can used that one? Since it will be used very seldom one should make sure its battery is alsways fully loaded though.
Great and timely video, as always! Just curious, was and is there any communications recordings available about Delta 1425 (the one that lost the engine cone mid flight from Atlanta to Baltimore)? I see very little mention of it anywhere, except the cabin videos.
I’m not a pilot, but got to sit up front in a citation a few times for work trip. We would hear an instruction, pilot would repeat it, then eventually ATC would repeat the same instructions. So we figured out pretty quickly they weren’t hearing us. He let me know that we had a handheld if we could figure it out soon. Eventually after unplugging and plugging things back in, it started working again. Good to know there was a backup, but pretty nervous for a little bit. I can’t imagine this type of problem in such an important area. Glad they got it taken care of without incident.
Seems really strange they did not yet change that very old radio system. If an aircraft can block everyone because of an open mic that really is an issue. At least I would think there should be a "distinct" frequency for both sides so that at least ground can still talk even if others can not talk because of such a mic stuck issue.
True.. It should not be in this way. But there are so many factors, I can think of some: 1. Investing new system is costly. If the aviation industry has no major reason to force the manufacturer to make a new one, they will just use the existing radio system. 2. Training pilots to use the old system has lower cost than training pilots to use the new system. 3. Existing pilots need to be re-trained. 4. New radio system can't help company make money directly. Therefore, no need to be most advanced, acceptable would be fine. As long as no safety issue is compromised, company prefer not to change it.
It would be very difficult to replace AM VHF as the changeover would need to be coordinated world wide. Part of the problem here was the pilots not knowing their mic was stuck. Simple monitoring of this and an EICAS message notifying them might’ve helped them understand the cause of the RF failure. Disabling the affected ACP would resolve this.
The likely solution is make a brief broadcast on the jammed channel informing aircraft assigned to that channel to switch to alternate frequency nnn.n, then make the same announcement on guard so that the aircraft who couldn't hear on the jammed frequency get the message as well. Now communication can resume somewhat normally on the alternate, and the offending aircraft remains on the primary. The final challenge that remains is communicating with the aircraft with the stuck mic, as their alternate receivers are likely desensed by the active transmitter. The likely reason that AAL2234 could still establish coms on guard is that 121.5 is nearly 15 megahertz off from the radio transmitting on 125.7, and the effects of receiver desense decrease the further away you get from the transmitter frequency.
It really amazes me how bad the radio operating practice is on services like this. It was the same at the emergency services (police etc) back when they used such a system. I would think a 5-minute discussion during their training could explain them how the system works and why it is not useful to try to talk to someone who has a stuck mike, but it is very common.
No. Most transport-level aircraft radios generate sidetone (the audio you hear back as you transmit) by activating the receive chain simultaneously. This is also common on ground ATC systems that use multiple voting receivers, they activate a receiver at a different site as you transmit. It is designed like this to give you confidence that your transmitter is working properly, if it's not you get a noticeable silence. If conditions are right, you can hear heterodyne squeal or even a message.
Why the hell did they clear the American 276 for landing?? If 276 was unable to go around for some reason and the RF aircraft didn't clear the runway, it could've been a fucking disaster..
I guess, why not just get a flashing "FOLLOW ME" car in front of him? Once a stuck mic happened here in Sweden, the airport and planes like semlessly went over to a reserved spare frequency and operations went just about normal. Do they not have that over there?
I don't know if it's the same on planes, but as a HAM radio operator I would have lowered my power in a situation where my mic was stuck and stepping on other transmissions
Should be able to put TCAS into emergency land mode at a certain airport and it automatically lets ATC and other planes around it know what is happening.
TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) isn't connected to the transponder (in a basic way) and can only scan the area for returns of other planes. Now GPS systems could allow for such an idea however I think a better solution would be to send an ACARs message to ATC and all surrounding aircraft
Stuck ptt switch? If it's on the captain's side: press another "mic selector" button on the captain's asp. Now the fo will tx to ATC and both pilots can still rx. When you select a new option on the mic selector button make sure it is something not used: like vhf-3 or hf...don't select PA. That might be embarrassing.
Did everyone hear how some radio traffic still got through even though to other aircraft even though there was a stuck mike? Remember that the next time you wonder why aviation radios still use AM instead of FM, on FM any signal 3dB stronger than another one will totally capture a receiver meaning this stuck mike would have jammed the channel far worse if it was FM.
It might be how it’s visualized but I’m not sure why he made that company AA descend right in front of him, looked for a while they were on a collision course, especially with one of them 7600, just keep them at 6000 until they clear
If anyone is still watching this video, why is there no way for ATC to communicate to a Plane through some type of messaging or vise versa when there is RF? Thanks!
Because air traffic still uses the outdated simplex AM transmission system that should have been replaced by a modern system similar to what everyone else uses now... With simplex AM the receiver is off when the transmitter is on. You need to press a button when you want to talk and when that button gets stuck you can only talk, not listen. Compare that to your phone where you can talk and listen at the same time, due to much more modern techniques. But in air traffic, everything is 25 years behind the times!
![[REAL ATC] American B757 has COMPLETE RADIO FAILURE out of Kennedy!](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
