Tag Archives for air traffic control.
Air traffic control in Manila lost power on New Years’ and all flights were halted. Tens of thousands of passengers were stranded as flights were cancelled and diverted. Inbound aircraft couldn’t fly to Manila – for instance a Qantas flight from Sydney took a six hour flight to nowhere, turning around nearly halfway through its eight hour journey.
A year after the U.S. assassinated Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Irans troops responsible for clandestine operations against other nations, a digitally altered voice was broadcast to New York air traffic controllers announcing that a plane would be flown into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
When residents complain about airport noise I’m not usually sympathetic, the airport was there before you were and planes aren’t as noisy as they used to be. And when you see thousands of noise complaints about an airport it’s frequently just one to three residents making them all believe it or not (the complaints process has been automated).
But what about when the FAA redirects air traffic overhead?
Two years ago someone was pretending to be Melbourne, Australia air traffic control. A Virgin Australia flight from Gold Coast was instructed to land by this person — the plane came witin 275 feet of the runway before the real air traffic control waved them off. The Boeing 737 climbed to 3800 feet and made a go-round.
Frighteningly that seems not to have been a one-off. A man has been arrested for pulling that same stunt in Buenos Aires.
This is an incredible story. Air traffic controller Anthonius Gunawan Agung was working at Palu airport in Indonesia on Saturday when several earthquakes occurred.
The tower evacuated but he stayed behind to ensure Batik Air flight ID 6231 got off the ground. It was a 5:55 p.m. scheduled departure. The captain pushed back 3 minutes early and was cleared for takeoff at 6:02 p.m.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
