Losing contact with your flight

[thegriffinpages]

Has anyone here lost contact with their flight due to communication equipment failure or some other reason?

In my ATP study guide it says that the pilot must stay the course agreed upon by ATC or flight plan depending on the situation assuming the plane hasn’t had some kind of catastrophic failure.

What usually happens in the dispatch office when this occurs?

 

[CrippleHawk]

Never did personally. But ARTCCs are known to lose contact with a flight but VERY rarely. When that happens

Usually the center (where the flight is flying in ) will call dispatch (IE you) and they will ask you to send an ACARS message to the flight telling them to call the Center at the center's frequency of choice...That happened only twice with me. and everything went fine after that. In both cases the Center forgot to hand off the flight to the other Center (Or the pilot forgot, don't remember).

 

[thegriffinpages]

Never did personally. But ARTCCs are known to lose contact with a flight but VERY rarely. When that happens

Usually the center (where the flight is flying in ) will call dispatch (IE you) and they will ask you to send an ACARS message to the flight telling them to call the Center at the center's frequency of choice...That happened only twice with me. and everything went fine after that. In both cases the Center will forgot to hand off the flight to the other Center (Or the pilot forgot, don't remember).

Oh ok. Didn't think about the fact that someone could forget the handoff. At least you could message them. What would have happened if for some reason you couldn't ACARS? Would that become a situation where a dispatcher would declare an emergency for a missing/unresponsive plane/crew?

 

[METARd]

Arinc first

 

[F9DXER]

Several years ago I had a flight that couldn't transmit but could receive.
ATC just asked them to ident after every instruction. ATC kept the instruction to a minimum and the flight landed without issue.

Your company will have specific procedures on what to do if a flight has lost all communication.

Usually you just paint the tail red and change the callsign to Northwest.

 

[Heliman81]

ACARS, Arinc, satcom, atc centers/facilities, other company aircraft in the vicinity and I'm forgetting one or two more.

Lost contact a few times due to missed handoffs and one that was encroaching on DC center that wasn't talking to ATC. That was stressful.

 

[thegriffinpages]

Thanks folks!

 

[ppragman]

Pilot here, I've had lost comms with atc multiple times - it was never a big deal.

 

[SpaceBeagle]

Errors in switching frequencies happen way more often than you'd think; pilots tend to transpose the numbers or try to take a switch that's for another aircraft. It's usually resolved in-house so nobody ever hears about it. The usual way of contacting a NORDO include:

1. Call previous sector, radio check
2. Call next sector, radio check
3. Call the a/c on guard
4. Only then would you call the company

 

[z987k]

Errors in switching frequencies happen way more often than you'd think; pilots tend to transpose the numbers or try to take a switch that's for another aircraft. It's usually resolved in-house so nobody ever hears about it. The usual way of contacting a NORDO include:

1. Call previous sector, radio check
2. Call next sector, radio check
3. Call the a/c on guard
4. Only then would you call the company

You forgot VHF/HF selcal, satcoms, CPDLC, other aircraft in the area etc.
I haven't flown an airplane without a sat phone in a long time.

 

[DispatcherSam]

Chances are you are never going to call in an emergency for your aircraft, and if you do, then you probably didn’t check all the boxes first.

 

[SpaceBeagle]

That is not how they do things at ZME. Even if we had access to all of that, there's no sense in going down the tubes when the company can easily acars the crew.

It's much simpler to have the supe call company than solicit help from company metal, if you even have other company metal in your sector.

 

[Luigi]

That is not how they do things at ZME. Even if we had access to all of that, there's no sense in going down the tubes when the company can easily acars the crew.

It's much simpler to have the supe call company than solicit help from company metal, if you even have other company metal in your sector.

It’s about 50/50 whether I get the ATC sup calling with a freq or whether I get an ACARS from another crew with a freq. honestly it’s never made sense to have a crew shoot an acars to company since you could be talking about 5 minutes to send the msg, then 5 minutes for dispatch to uplink that message to the ac that needs a new freq. 10 minutes is a really long time.

 

[McCrosky]

Other than the occasional nordo call from center, the worst I’ve ever experienced was a oceanic flight loose all the LRCS. They relayed position reports via another aircraft. Funny part was when they got across and landed, mx “fixed” the comm problem. They took off, unable to talk to or datalink, and turned back.

Otherwise, I have not known anyone to that has personally experienced an all out squawk 7600 comm failure

 

[bbmikej]

It’s about 50/50 whether I get the ATC sup calling with a freq or whether I get an ACARS from another crew with a freq. honestly it’s never made sense to have a crew shoot an acars to company since you could be talking about 5 minutes to send the msg, then 5 minutes for dispatch to uplink that message to the ac that needs a new freq. 10 minutes is a really long time.

Usually when a sup calls, we get an acars from another crew at the same time. To be honest, we normally have an acars from another crew by the time the sup calls.

 

[Heliman81]

Other than the occasional nordo call from center, the worst I’ve ever experienced was a oceanic flight loose all the LRCS. They relayed position reports via another aircraft. Funny part was when they got across and landed, mx “fixed” the comm problem. They took off, unable to talk to or datalink, and turned back.

Otherwise, I have not known anyone to that has personally experienced an all out squawk 7600 comm failure

Idk what they were talking about... OPS CHECK GOOD!

Those are the best air returns.

 

[A1TAPE]

Has anyone here lost contact with their flight due to communication equipment failure or some other reason?

In my ATP study guide it says that the pilot must stay the course agreed upon by ATC or flight plan depending on the situation assuming the plane hasn’t had some kind of catastrophic failure.

What usually happens in the dispatch office when this occurs?

In the case of that NWA flight that overshot its destination by 150mn what happened was that ATC couldn't raise them so dispatch sent them ACARS messages which they never responded to. They then sent 2 more ACARS messages with updated contact frequencies from ZMP as they kept plowing thru different sectors in MSP center. Then they tried using SECAL which again no answer. At this point dispatch contacted the ATCC domestic evert network coordinator and contact a duty pilot for the fleet aircraft. Since they wernt able to contact the aircraft they were running the numbers for fuel burn and how long it could go for. Finally ZMP got in contact with the crew and they landed safely.

One of the scarier notes from the interview was that "[the chief dispatcher] stated that the DEN had advised them they were at combat ready status to launch the fighters, and that they were within minutes of launching an intercept."
All this was from the NTSB interviews.
https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/48000-48499/48456/431889.pdf

 

[Cptnchia]

One of the scarier notes from the interview was that "[the chief dispatcher] stated that the DEN had advised them they were at combat ready status to launch the fighters, and that they were within minutes of launching an intercept."
All this was from the NTSB interviews.
https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/48000-48499/48456/431889.pdf

Nothing scary about that. Standard practice for military aircraft to intercept NORDO aircraft to determine what is going on. Nothing gets an unaware pilot to call up on Guard faster than a fighter joining up.

What that statement DOESN’T mean is that they were launching to go shoot it down. While that is an extreme option once eyeballs are on the target aircraft, military pilots are trained to fly in close proximity to other aircraft, and make better platforms for accomplishing this feat.

 

[who'swho]

In the case of that NWA flight that overshot its destination by 150mn what happened was that ATC couldn't raise them so dispatch sent them ACARS messages which they never responded to. They then sent 2 more ACARS messages with updated contact frequencies from ZMP as they kept plowing thru different sectors in MSP center. Then they tried using SECAL which again no answer. At this point dispatch contacted the ATCC domestic evert network coordinator and contact a duty pilot for the fleet aircraft. Since they wernt able to contact the aircraft they were running the numbers for fuel burn and how long it could go for. Finally ZMP got in contact with the crew and they landed safely.

One of the scarier notes from the interview was that "[the chief dispatcher] stated that the DEN had advised them they were at combat ready status to launch the fighters, and that they were within minutes of launching an intercept."
All this was from the NTSB interviews.
https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/48000-48499/48456/431889.pdf

This is all old news that we are all quite familiar with. I think the question was asking for 1st hand accounts. Not some troll rehashing an old story cuz they aren't a dispatcher and don't have any experience of their own to draw on.

 

[who'swho]

Has anyone here lost contact with their flight due to communication equipment failure or some other reason?

In my ATP study guide it says that the pilot must stay the course agreed upon by ATC or flight plan depending on the situation assuming the plane hasn’t had some kind of catastrophic failure.

What usually happens in the dispatch office when this occurs?

Had a fellow dispatcher who got a call from ATC cuz their flight started flying erratically about 100nm west of DCA. They were circling and changing altitudes as well as not talking to ATC. They finally responded to ACARS just a few minutes before the fighters were going to be scrambled. Never did hear what their excuse was.