by CFIDave » Wed Oct 02, 2019 3:20 pm
ultraturtle wrote: ↑Wed Oct 02, 2019 8:20 am
I have no problem with pilots exercising their emergency authority to use whatever means necessary to safely land their aircraft, to include violating FCC regulations if no other means exist. Assuming this intrepid King Air aviator was in hard IMC and bound by lost comm rules to continue on, fine. All he needed to do was to document his use of emergency authority should the Feds come looking. Same for the poor FAA controller who he put on the spot by accepting that cell call and issuing the clearance, since the controller obviously knew it was from an airborne caller. The controller also holds an FCC license that can be revoked, costing him or her their job.
Hopefully, the situation was not in VMC. The imperative to remain VMC and land would have meant an inconvenient divert, but would have saved the pilot’s FCC permit, and the FAA controller’s job should the incident have come under scrutiny.
Airborne cell phone use is not trivial to flight safety. Just one of many current articles easily available:
https://www.cultofmac.com/639984/in-fli ... eing-2019/
The "intrepid King Air aviator" was fortunately in VMC and familiar with the local geography when he had a complete panel failure; otherwise he would have had an emergency trying to land somewhere in IMC with only his iPad for navigation. While flying in VMC, ATC was able to give him a clearance via an airborne phone call into the DC SFRA for landing at his home airport.
I know of another pilot friend with a DA40 that was based at College Park, MD (KCPS, one of the "DC 3" airports within the innermost secure Flight Restricted Zone of Washington, DC) who used his cellphone in the air to call ATC to get his clearance to land at KCPS, with clearances into both the DC SFRA and FRZ and issuance of a transponder squawk code. He had to give his private security code over the phone to gain access to the FRZ, a standard procedure for pilots who have undergone the special security vetting necessary to land at one of the DC 3 airports.
A few days later he got charged with a pilot deviation by both the FAA and Homeland Security, lost use of his FRZ security code, and was forced to relocate his DA40 to another airport located outside the DC FRZ. It turns out that outmoded regulations (that were written years ago when cellular communications were all analog, unencrypted, and could easily be intercepted via a scanner) still require that security codes for clearance into the FRZ can only be requested with a phone call
initiated from the ground. Because he called and gave out his FRZ code from an airborne aircraft, he got busted.
During all of his interactions with the FAA, hiring a lawyer to defend himself, etc. NOBODY ever brought up that it was illegal to make a cellphone call while in the air per FCC regulations. He got in trouble
only because he wasn't on the ground when he used his code to request a FRZ clearance.
(We who fly in the Washington, DC area have to put up with a lot of post-9/11/2001 "security theater," including the "forces of darkness" in a command center whose entire job is monitoring the DC-area airspace to bust pilots who don't squawk the right transponder code (1200 is forbidden), get the right clearances, or clip the edge of the SFRA. The feds have a "zero tolerance" policy for pilot errors in the airspace.)
[quote=ultraturtle post_id=76308 time=1570004422 user_id=2246]
I have no problem with pilots exercising their emergency authority to use whatever means necessary to safely land their aircraft, to include violating FCC regulations if no other means exist. Assuming this intrepid King Air aviator was in hard IMC and bound by lost comm rules to continue on, fine. All he needed to do was to document his use of emergency authority should the Feds come looking. Same for the poor FAA controller who he put on the spot by accepting that cell call and issuing the clearance, since the controller obviously knew it was from an airborne caller. The controller also holds an FCC license that can be revoked, costing him or her their job.
Hopefully, the situation was not in VMC. The imperative to remain VMC and land would have meant an inconvenient divert, but would have saved the pilot’s FCC permit, and the FAA controller’s job should the incident have come under scrutiny.
Airborne cell phone use is not trivial to flight safety. Just one of many current articles easily available: [url]https://www.cultofmac.com/639984/in-flight-phone-calls-risk-faa-boeing-2019/[/url]
[/quote]
The "intrepid King Air aviator" was fortunately in VMC and familiar with the local geography when he had a complete panel failure; otherwise he would have had an emergency trying to land somewhere in IMC with only his iPad for navigation. While flying in VMC, ATC was able to give him a clearance via an airborne phone call into the DC SFRA for landing at his home airport.
I know of another pilot friend with a DA40 that was based at College Park, MD (KCPS, one of the "DC 3" airports within the innermost secure Flight Restricted Zone of Washington, DC) who used his cellphone in the air to call ATC to get his clearance to land at KCPS, with clearances into both the DC SFRA and FRZ and issuance of a transponder squawk code. He had to give his private security code over the phone to gain access to the FRZ, a standard procedure for pilots who have undergone the special security vetting necessary to land at one of the DC 3 airports.
A few days later he got charged with a pilot deviation by both the FAA and Homeland Security, lost use of his FRZ security code, and was forced to relocate his DA40 to another airport located outside the DC FRZ. It turns out that outmoded regulations (that were written years ago when cellular communications were all analog, unencrypted, and could easily be intercepted via a scanner) still require that security codes for clearance into the FRZ can only be requested with a phone call [u]initiated from the ground[/u]. Because he called and gave out his FRZ code from an airborne aircraft, he got busted.
During all of his interactions with the FAA, hiring a lawyer to defend himself, etc. NOBODY ever brought up that it was illegal to make a cellphone call while in the air per FCC regulations. He got in trouble [u]only[/u] because he wasn't on the ground when he used his code to request a FRZ clearance.
(We who fly in the Washington, DC area have to put up with a lot of post-9/11/2001 "security theater," including the "forces of darkness" in a command center whose entire job is monitoring the DC-area airspace to bust pilots who don't squawk the right transponder code (1200 is forbidden), get the right clearances, or clip the edge of the SFRA. The feds have a "zero tolerance" policy for pilot errors in the airspace.)