Acars

alphaone

alphaone

Well-Known Member
So, I'm confused. With ACARS, can't the airliners get their clearance typed to them in email form or something? I am listening to JFK right now and they are reading clearance to heavy jets who I thought would would have ACARS. How does it work?
 
Yes some airliners can. I've seen a UAL 777 receive clearance and print it out in the cockpit but I've also seen a VS 747 call for clearance. I also have a flight manual for an MD-11 and in it it states that the function is not yet functional...and the manual is from March 2005. Not sure what dictates the procedure...would be interesting to know.
 
alphaone said:
So, I'm confused. With ACARS, can't the airliners get their clearance typed to them in email form or something? I am listening to JFK right now and they are reading clearance to heavy jets who I thought would would have ACARS. How does it work?
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At the company I'm at all a/c are ACARs equipped so at ACARS stations (JFK is one, but many airports aren't) we usually receive a PDC (pre-departure clearance) via acars--we usually get one printed up from the gate agent as well. Sometimes we will have to call to get a clearance--usually during irregular ops because a clearance timed out or something like that.
 
Pre-departure clearances can only be picked up at certain airports for certain companies. For my airline's Caribbean ops, we can't get a PDC anywhere, even at our hub (San Juan, PR), so we use clearance delivery. Anywhere other than San Juan they just fire off our clearance on ground or tower as we're taxiing out. Good times--a 90-second taxi (often a backtaxi) where you copy clearances and complete taxi/takeoff checks.

We can get PDC's over the ACARS when we fly out of Miami, though.
 
The company I am at is too cheap to get PDC even though we have ACARS. They actually put a note in our DRS to "conserve" on the number of characters we used when sending ACARS messages as we pay per character. Grrr.
 
stultus said:
Sometimes we will have to call to get a clearance--usually during irregular ops because a clearance timed out or something like that.
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or reroutes. We get CDR's in the release sometimes, but i've yet to get assigned one instead of just getting a new route (my favorite of which are when they close the newark departure fix we were filed over... "call clearance for new airways").
 
Champcar said:
I assumed it was standard equipment on most airliners out of the factory. Shows how much i know.
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Pretty much the only 'standard things' on an airliner are the airframe, not even the engines, avionics or anything else.
 
You can generally tell which airlines have ACARS by looking at their on time statistics. Those that are in the upper half for the most part don't. Those near the bottom do. It's hard to lie about your in/out times when they are recorded and sent by the box.:)


(of course, I am generalizing.)
 
If you want to have an on-time operation, do not have automatic out/off/on/in times reporting.

We did it all manually at Skyway and we were always "on time". That scheduled 15 minute turn when we'd taxi in, deplane, clean the aircraft, exterior preflight, get a clearance and go raid the food court was always, magically 15 minutes.

All the gate agents cared about was that when you called your times in once you were in the air, that they were on time leaving the gate, and about five minutes later for off times.

On time statistics are publicity only.
 
alphaone said:
So, I'm confused. With ACARS, can't the airliners get their clearance typed to them in email form or something? I am listening to JFK right now and they are reading clearance to heavy jets who I thought would would have ACARS. How does it work?
Click to expand...
ACARS is just a wireless data link that tranmits text data via radio. The messages pop up on the FMS, although I think some of the older jets had little tractor-feed dot-matrix printers that did the same job. Sometimes, either the station transmitting the pre-dispatch clearance (or ATIS, or whatever...) is on the fritz, or the ACARS reciever on your plane is. Then you just have to call up good 'ol clearance and get it the old fashioned way. Sometimes the fella sending the clearance just forgets or gets too busy, so if I have to call to get it at a busy station like Newark, I simply have to say "Newark Clearance, Jetlink XXXX to Wherever, Negative PDC." and he knows exactly what I'm talking about and what I need. Often as not, he'll come back with "Jetlink XXXX, I'm sending your PDC now..." or he'll read me the clearance right then.
Your ACARS has to be initialized at the begining of each flight you upload the fight number, destination, crew employee numbers, etc. so that the information gets routed to the correct plane, sort of like having an I.P. adress assigned to you each time you log onto the internet. If I forget to initialize the ACARS during the preflight, I'll be sitting around impatiently waiting for a PDC that has no idea what plane to go to.
It's a great system, and breakdowns are pretty rare. I can get ATIS information from any airport no matter the range, send a message to maintainance cotrol to get a MEL if I need one, send an in-range report to order wheelchairs, electric carts, or assistance with blind passengers or minors, and a host of other things that you would otherwise have to wait till you were within radio range or on a congested frequency to do.
 
BobDDuck said:
Ah... but can you order a pizza with it?
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Sure, if the person on the other end is a friend... :)

It's also good for getting sports scores for passengers.

We (American Eagle) just got Electronic Weight and Balance (EWBS) for flights to and from DFW so no more filling out load manifests for me! We just send a little text message with fuel on board and voila!; after the cargo and passenger totals are sent in, the EWBS prints out.

Thank god, what a pain in the arse. Now if they could just send me the V speeds... Oh well, filling out a TOLD card is sure a lot easier than all of the info on the Load Manifest.
 
Not all airlines have ACARS and, of those that do, not all pay for PDC, and then not at every airport.

At ACA, we got PDC clearances and hubs, but nowhere else. At ASA, we don't have ACARS, but it is coming. And the check is the mail.

One great thing about ACARS is that it relieves you of the requirement to monitor a company frequency on the second radio. Also, it is easy to get updated METARS and TAFs for any station. Want to know what the forecast is when you get to your overnight? Just plug it in.

And yes, I have heard of people ordering sandwiches from ops when they send the in-range message.
 
davetheflyer said:
One great thing about ACARS is that it relieves you of the requirement to monitor a company frequency on the second radio.
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you sure about that one? At least at my company, SELCAL is the "primary" means of a dispatcher staying in contact with us. We need to have SELCAL in com2 (not monitoring, just dialed in) regardless of the fact we have ACARS.
 
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