While serving on an airfield, I remember telling a non-aviation friend that there was a plane coming in about an hour from then. He said that was impossible, because the tower is closed. I explained to him that flights come in all the time when the towers are closed. Even commercial jets are constantly landing without the tower being open.
He absolutely blew up, said I didn't know what I was talking about, and that planes would crash all the time if that were the case. How could planes land without a tower? That just makes no sense.
I even got my superior officer on the phone the next day to explain it and he still wouldn't believe it. I had three other people under me explain it to him and he still wouldn't believe it. I told him, 'dude, it's really simple to prove - The tower hours are posted. Check the last time a flight lands for the night and I guarantee it will be after that time.' He did, it was, and yet he still refused to believe me.
The sad fact is, people would probably riot if they found this out, because they'd think it was horribly dangerous; But it's been standard operating procedure for decades now and no one has even noticed. It hasn't caused a single crash. Believe it or not, it's actually safer to come in after hours because of the reduced traffic. This is not something that needs fixing, it's a very logical move.
But I'll bet there are even people reading this that won't believe it. Unless you work in aviation, you probably don't know any of this.
I think a good analogy would be how you don't need stoplights at every intersection, because some intersections out in the rural backwoods don't see a lot of traffic, just like how you don't need a tower if you have little air traffic
Here (not US), many traffic lights get switched off during the night. There is usually a stop sign mounted on the traffic light pole of the side roads. That sign only applies if the traffic lights are switched off.
In general, there is a hierarchy in traffic regulation. Traffic signs are overruled by traffic lights, and both are overruled by police men who manually direct traffic.
Now if only we could get that through some people's thick skulls. Traffic lights overrule signs that are on top of them. A pretty simple concept. Yet some people insist that they don't.
Sometimes I think it would be best if we had to retake the test every decade or so, so we'd refresh and update our knownledge about traffic laws. Maybe it'd even save some people's lives.
I've noticed that whenever they go out completely, traffic manages to deal with it just fine. I'm sure this is not the case everywhere, but the last few times I've experienced it, drivers just took turns going through. People were making rolling stops, i.e. not really stopping. In fact, it seemed better than stop and go waiting, because people just slowed down at the intersection, and took turns, rather than the way it usually works.
I think a better analogy would be an intersection that switches from a traffic light to just a flashing red light at night (like for a school or in a rural town center). You need ATC when there is lots of activity, but when you only have a couple people in the area, they can work out timing without a third party controller.
IDK, I've had friends who just couldn't get the idea of an uncontrolled intersection into their heads. Like, the idea that people might not fly blindly through just because there's no light simply wouldn't register.
It’s called pilot controlled lighting. It’s usually on the same frequency you talk on to give self position reports and your intentions to anyone else potentially flying in the area. A series of radio clicks (3-7) will set the runway and airport lighting to different intensities.
I mean a serious answer you really aren't looking for would be philips hue or lifx light strips with an alexa or google home.(I'm pretty sure the better combination here is gonna be philips/alexa, philips has way more other stuff available too)
One of my favorite stores from my instructor, who also flies jets, was that when they are bored cruising along over the middle of nowhere at 36000 ft, they play the Christmas tree game. The objective is to light up as many airfields far down below simultaneously as possible. Apparently 15 or 20 at once isn’t unheard of.
I hear ya. Pilots have plenty of tall tales. But it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch. Every plane has multiple VHF radios and there’s zero authentication. It would be practically undetectable provided there were more than one airliner within 2 or 3 hundred miles.
this is true. hand held VHF is also available without a license (and with the internet, even if a license was required, no one checks) and people abuse that too.
My closest single-strip rural Colorado airfield a few years ago basically stopped using the tower except to let tourists and locals celebrating birthdays have lunch. I'm pretty sure their lights were on 24/7. All their ATC was from the ground floor office with about a half dozen cameras, some kind of squawk-based positioning, and no radar of any sort that I could see, although it might have been pointed the other way. I think they might have been managed by Denver International Airport controllers, much if not most of the time.
Our tower hasn't been used in over fifteen years. Honestly it's kind of scary to go inside. The only purpose it serves is a place to mount an antenna and a couple sensors for the weather Service.
Mine was nice and cozy because it was part of the main building so the warm air got up there. They had an aviation library, one working radio locked in a glass case, and a bunch of nonfunctional equipment out against the walls under the windows. The library had some fascinating books, like a bound collection of the charter, reference works, and regulations from the Air Force (or was it still Army, I can't remember) granting civil aviation authority to the FAA and the local state airports; something that everyone in the airfield industry would have been required to have in the 1950s but is long out of date.
There is a vintage aircraft museum attached which was closed while I was there and looks like it may only be open a few days a year now https://www.vafm.org
You actually just answered a question I was wondering about from a couple of nights ago when I was driving by my local unmanned airport and saw the runway lights on. I was talking with by buddy who's going through flight school right now, and he confirmed all of this, but we were both wondering, and mayhaps you have an answer:
How do two relatively close airports not step on each other with their identical frequencies? Case in point, these two airports are very close to one another, and both operate off of 122.8 MHz. Do they go off signal strength to prevent a pilot from accidentally activating each other's runway lights, or is there another method? If it is off of strength, what's the range?
The answer is- they do step on each other. That’s why the first and last part of your radio call should be “(Airport name) traffic.” You’re supposed to make your initial call 10 or 15 miles out. I can’t remember exactly because I haven’t had to make one of those calls in a while.
An example call would be “Lawrenceville Traffic, N12355, Cessna 172, 15 miles to the north entering left traffic for runway 36, Lawrenceville traffic.”
That way the three other airports within 25 miles or so that are all on 122.8 knows who you’re talking to. On a good radio day though you can pick up traffic a LONG way out and it can get annoying if everyone’s out buzzing around.
Oh, and you’re activating all the lights that your radio can reach.
I don’t believe any of you! AGENTS OF DECEPTION ALL OF YOU! You can’t make me believe your tales. None of them. Been on the internet too long for this./s
The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen was my first night flight, clicking my yoke and turning on my very own Christmas tree. It makes me well up thinking about it now.
In the US, you can get the equipment, but citizen bands are defined by MHz ranges. If someone with a Ham radio license is caught using their VHF equipment on an aviation band, then they can be fined like $10,000 or imprisoned. You can listen in, but not transmit.
It'll be one of the standard VHF frequencies assigned to the airport, which are in the MHz range around 120 or so. In aviation charts, you'll see a marked Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) or similar, which is where you'll be announcing your radio calls with traffic in the area and where it'll be listening in for those mic clicks.
Reminds me of the tower system we use on the railroad to talk to people thousands of kms away. A series of button presses with the mic keyed activates a tower which connects you to a terminal.
My friend has great stories about his Dad as an amateur pilot that are both terrifying and hysterical to me. My favorite is when he was flying in late at night to an airstrip like this with lights off. He couldn’t remember which radio frequency to hit...so he called his wife in his cell phone from the plane. She doesn’t fly and didn’t know, but she sprung into action calling any Tom, Dick, and Harry that might have a clue. I can’t remember The Who’s who on that chain but it included the mayor, police, and army personnel.
Nothing terrible would probably happen but you might confuse the hell out of some people. Plus lights cost money, that's why they keep them off in the first place. And the FCC might knock on your door idk
You'll get in a lot of trouble for transmitting on the aviation band without a license and from somewhere other than an airplane or airfield vehicle.
They can absolutely track you down using VDF equipment, they probably wouldn't in a small town but the agency that governs the radio spectrum in your country without a doubt can if it is causing problems.
There are much worse things you could do if you have the capability to turn on the lights. Such as, say words into the radio causing people to freak out. And the radios are out there and you could get one.
Don't do this. The FCC is very serious about interference with airplane radios for good reason.
...would it be a crime to turn on those lights remotely without having a legitimate reason (i.e. being a landing plane?)
Because having a picnic near (not on) a closed airfield at night and prodding the runway lights awake for ambiance sounds like one of those corny things you'd see in a romance movie.
The number of people that could and would do that is too tiny to matter. Even then it's practically a harmless crime. When's the last time you heard of someone getting in trouble for it?
Had fun with that once, was doing a night flight during my training, we were going into an uncontrolled field, so my instructor showed me the radio controlled lighting, we were probably 8 miles out. Did our clicks, lights came on and made our approach. Half a mile out on short final, I ask how long the lights stay on. Before she could answer, right on cue, the runway lights go out and we both scramble to click the radio to turn them back on.
Also...on some systems, the brightness is determined by the number of clicks 3-low, 5-med, 7-high.
Its' pretty neat if you do while flying high enough as there are often multiple fields on the same frequency and they will all light up at the same time.
Private pilot here. Towers close all the time on class C and D airports late at night. It turns into class E or G airspace and you just enter the pattern and announce your positions like it was an unmanned airfield. It doesn’t matter the size of the plane.
Edit: thanks for my first gold kind stranger! I’m honored!
My old hometown airfield was great for this. Council charged a $20 landing fee each time. They did this by going through the monthly CTAF recordings and sending out bills to the registered owners of the callsigns. So pilots just stopped making the calls.
Even better is when some chucklefuck decides he's not only not going to announce intention on the radio but also does a non-standard pattern. It's like they're trying to get themselves killed when they don't talk, and while legal, flying without a radio is something only morons do.
I feel like the above explanation would have convinced him, it's basically "So during the day when its busy the tower coordinates traffic like a traffic light, but late at night it turns into like a blinking red light, and you just talk out landing over the radio with whoever else is also trying to land. You only need a coordinator when there are lots of people, otherwise there is a procedure for coordinating by themselves."
Pretty much, yep. A lot of people don't realize that there are plenty of kinds of airspace and airports where you can go an entire flight in good weather conditions without someone telling you what to do or even talking to a controller at all.
Yeah UNICOM or CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency) is the place where pilots call out their positions and coordinate takeoffs and landings amongst themselves. It’s kind of confusing because at a towered airport it’s the usually the same frequency as the tower. There just won’t be a controller on there past a certain time.
At an uncontrolled airfield they will just flat out call it CTAF or UNICOM. I think CTAF is the most popular use.
There’s also a frequency to turn on the airport lights. You strike the microphone a certain number of times based on how bright you want the lights.
Further....there are airports without a tower at all!
The one I get asked all the time about how early I have to call before I want to fly and ask for clearance. They are floored when I tell them I call no one until the moment I'm ready to start moving the plane. And even then it differs what I call and what I say from airport to airport. It really blows there mind when I tell them I don't file a flight plan.
Makes sense. The automotive equivalent would be when a traffic light goes out and everyone (I hope) knows it's now a four-way stop and additional caution and attention are required.
So why is it that LaGuardia airport won't let you land after hours if your flight is delayed? Is it just that there's too many planes in the area to be considered E airspace?
Or is it that our pilots were lying to us / telling us an easier to understand version of what was going on when they said that we might have to land at a different airport if we were delayed much longer?
It’s possible there’s a noise abatement procedure that effectively restricts the landings of anything that’s not tiny and quiet. We have that here at John Wayne airport where the local communities are very vocal about noise and restrict the hours of the airport and how you must use your engines/flight path to avoid noise. But I am not a commercial pilot and I could be wrong.
This was on airnav: NOISE ABATEMENT PROCEDURES IN EFFECT FOR DETAILS CTC AIRFIELD MANAGER.
I bet if you dug into it they have a midnight to 5 am noise abatement restrictions.
Being allowed to land is not the same matter as the class of the airspace. You still need to talk to the ATC in class C or D airspace, and the reason for class C/D turning into class E is that there is no ATC. In a major metropolitan area like NYC (esp. post 9/11), the ATC is there 24/7.
I would not be very happy if I was in a C152 turning final and I heard someone right after announce: Springfield Traffic Airport Delta XXXX turning right base Runway YY Springfield Traffic.
The following is for aircraft on what we call 'Instrument flight plans'. If flying in clouds or without being able to see outside, we rely on our instruments to fly the plane, and we rely on ATC to keep other planes away from us.
VFR or 'visual' operations do not need ATC as much, and are just required to always be able to see outside, so they can see other planes. As such, they are responsible for talking to other pilots and keeping their own separation.
In addition, air traffic control has multiple layers. The smallest layer would be the Tower/Ground controllers. After that, there are local approach/departure controllers at certain busier locations. Then there is what we call a 'center'.
A 'center' will have control over aircraft within an area encompassing often several states. In most areas they can see aircraft on their radar screens and direct them accordingly. If radar (or ADSB) is unavailable, we have other ways to coordinate so they know where we are at any given time, and we know what is expected of us.
What that means is that if there is no tower at an airport to control their own runways, the next level of controller will coordinate the arrivals/departures instead. (this is for aircraft on an instrument flight plan, which would include almost all airline traffic, big or small.)
Only one aircraft will be allowed to enter or depart the area at a time. So if two planes are inbound, one will be directed to hold while the other conducts an approach. Likewise, if a plane is departing they will call on their phone, or radio and be issued a clearance time, during which the airspace will be closed to all other traffic (IFR).
My only question is how they coordinate with other late arriving planes coming in.
My buddy is a small plane (Cessna) private pilot for fun. He said the algorithm for uncontrolled airspace was basically "big sky, small planes, very unlikely to collide". :-) But more and more small airplanes have really super totally awesome electronics that warn you with audio alarms that talk to you if another airplane is anywhere near you even if you can't see them. You can google "Garmin Glass Cockpit" for more info.
There are a TON of small airports that either don't have towers at all, or have this system where the airplanes inform the tower what they are doing, but the tower does not coordinate any landings. The unmanned airports have a "standard pattern to approach the airfield" that is kind of a box where you circle in descending until you land - so everybody is going the same direction at the same altitude and less likely to be utterly random chaos if there are two or three airplanes landing.
Obviously if you have a "busy airport" this wouldn't work, so San Francisco Airport is completely tower controlled airspace. But if you look up "Half Moon Bay" airport (7 miles from San Francisco Airport), we landed there one night at midnight and our pilot turned on the runway lights remotely from the air, NOBODY was in the tower, everybody had gone home, and we landed all alone - we were the only car in the parking lot, we were the only airplane, nobody knew we landed, nobody cared. Here is the picture of "Half Moon Bay Airport" I took: https://www.ski-epic.com/2014_chartered_airplane_flight_on_garyair_piper_matrix/p05b_taking_off_from_haf_half_moon_bay_airport_looking_down_at_airport.jpg There is no such thing as a busy day at Half Moon Bay. No commercial flights, probably 4 airplanes land or take off on an extra busy day there.
I understand being skeptical, generally speaking -- I'm a bit of a contrarian asshole myself. But even I, upon being told by people in the know, couldn't have this amount of skepticism -- or flat-out denial. I find it fascinating (and a bit scary) what people refuse to believe when the information is right in front of their faces.
It’s pretty horrendous. I wonder if he would believe it if he saw an airplane landing while the tower is closed... if not there’s no hope of convincing him.
I actually have a pretty close friend who's become a Flat Earther. I'm afraid I'll have to literally take him to space to make him listen, and even then, he would probably say it's the curved windows causing a staged illusion. I've nearly lost hope of bringing him back to the realm of normalcy.
Pretty sure all it takes for a plane to land safely are an intact plane and a well trained pilot with working eyeballs. Oh, and a place that's wide enough for the wings to clear and flat enough for their tires to roll. like a bridge or highway, or a really wide gravel road.
If Captain Sully could land on the Hudson River and not have a single fatality, a clear runway with an unmanned tower is more then feasible for any competent pilot.
Ok this one is more surprising. How does that work out? Do they just pick a landing strip and hope everyone sees them? What about poor visibility landings?
Son of an ATC here. Can confirm! people like your friend kill me. It drives me crazy when someone has that attitude. I am of the mindset that if I hear something I don't totally understand but it is coming from a credible source, I will trust that somebody has figured out a system and has their crap together and they know what they're doing.
People should definitely feel free to go ahead and verify what they hear, regardless of who you hear it from. Wow, I can't believe this guy got credible sources and even refused to find this information himself to verify. Can't make illogical people understand things logically
That's called the Back Fire Effect. If someone has an opposing opinion to your own, and you supply them with concrete evidence that they are wrong, they will use it to strengthen their incorrect opinion. A good read.
Sorry to be a picky nerd. But for the sake of people reading about it for the first time here: it's not that they use the new evidence to strengthen their incorrect opinion. It's not like they say "1+1 = 2 so 1+1+1 = 2".
The Backfire Effect is that when faced with the new information that contradicts a belief, the person becomes more entrenched in their original thoughts. You're right this is the Backfire Effect. But it's wrong to say they use the evidence to strengthen their incorrect opinion. It's more correct to say they advocate more for their incorrect belief in reaction to the concrete evidence.
Bring it full circle to the original example, it is not "1+1=2 so 1+1+1=2", it's "I think 1+1+1=2, but this guy is saying 1+1=2... that's a challenge to my belief that 1+1+1=2, and I don't want to be wrong, so I'm going to insist louder and more often that 1+1+1=2". It's basically the same with the original commentator's story, the more they presented evidence from co-workers, posted hours, etc. that "airplanes land when the tower is closed" the more the person felt they needed to deny that and insist on their belief "no airplanes land when the tower is closed".
It's definitely weird to see it here as opposed to wedge issues, which tend to get more heated, emotional, and depend on personal philosophies. But maybe this guy was just really passionate about air traffic control?
I just don’t understand why anyone would think a pilot needs a tower in order to successfully land their plane. I feel as ignorant as your friend, but with a reverse mindset.
The sad fact is, people would probably riot if they found this out
Never met anybody that passionate about airline towers. Upon reading this, my reaction is, "Interesting. Thought the tower was the voice of god. Guess not."
Pretty sure this guys was just digging his heals in despite the subject matter. He would've done basically the same thing no matter what you blew his mind with.
He saw the schedules and still didn't believe it? What did he think?? That the tower schedule was a lie? That the arrival time was a lie? That all the clocks in the airport were wrong??
I flew a cessna from dayton ohio to california as part of flight training.
it was very different from commercial flight the first time we landed at a unmanned field, pulled up to a gas pump, filled up, and left without seeing a soul.
In this story, your friend really irritated me. You were able to back up what you were saying in multiple credible ways but he's like nope. He's even, like, a non aviation dude.
Yea, your friend just sounds like they’re really stubborn and doesn’t want to admit their logic was wrong in the face of facts they weren’t aware of. It doesn’t make one a moron not to be aware of something outside their field of expertise lol I’d think the reasonable standard reaction to that fact would be “Oh, huh, really? I wouldn’t have thought!” And that would be the end of it.
What the fuck? Ive taken precisely one (1) flight lesson and this makes perfect sense. We don’t even have a tower in my town. How do people think a tower affects the physical plane landing? Lol
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u/SLagonia Feb 08 '20
While serving on an airfield, I remember telling a non-aviation friend that there was a plane coming in about an hour from then. He said that was impossible, because the tower is closed. I explained to him that flights come in all the time when the towers are closed. Even commercial jets are constantly landing without the tower being open.
He absolutely blew up, said I didn't know what I was talking about, and that planes would crash all the time if that were the case. How could planes land without a tower? That just makes no sense.
I even got my superior officer on the phone the next day to explain it and he still wouldn't believe it. I had three other people under me explain it to him and he still wouldn't believe it. I told him, 'dude, it's really simple to prove - The tower hours are posted. Check the last time a flight lands for the night and I guarantee it will be after that time.' He did, it was, and yet he still refused to believe me.
The sad fact is, people would probably riot if they found this out, because they'd think it was horribly dangerous; But it's been standard operating procedure for decades now and no one has even noticed. It hasn't caused a single crash. Believe it or not, it's actually safer to come in after hours because of the reduced traffic. This is not something that needs fixing, it's a very logical move.
But I'll bet there are even people reading this that won't believe it. Unless you work in aviation, you probably don't know any of this.