That Was The Week That Was 17-21 January 2022
Let’s talk about communications
It is true that the pilot’s guiding rule in the case of a disaster is to aviate, navigate and only then communicate. But that is a rule for pilots only (they like that they have special rules. Bless.) and only when there is a disaster to contend with. It should not be our guiding mantra. And that is only within an airline. ANSPs will tell you that a quarter of their concerns, along with ATM and N and S is C… But for some reason, we all of us in aviation seem to think that communications is something we have a special department for.
Nobody does silos like aviation does silos. We can dress them up, we can call them cylinders of excellence, but the fact remains that we are rubbish at communicating. But, our crown is under threat. In the US this week, the week that was, the complete and utter failure of communications between two arms of the US Federal government turned to a shouting match – with each side determined to shout ‘Wolf!’ loudest and first.
The best bit about this epic failure to communicate is that one of the Federal agencies involved has even got the word ‘communications’ in its title. The FAA and the FCC were both determined to not look like the fall guy as the battle between the breakthrough communication system of the last century (very fast transport) got just a little bit too up close and personal with the breakthrough communications system of this century (ultra-fast broadband).
As an aside, it is to be hoped that somewhere in the bowels of the US Government there is a plan to re-name every agency in this format. There is an FAA and an FCC. Where is the FBB, and the FDD? Sure, the FZZ will be a challenge for the team up in acronyms, but nothing that a decent comms department could not handle.
Meanwhile, at the dialogue of the deaf, the FCC noted that it had given the FAA five years’ notice of their intention to allow 5G masts around airports. The rest of the world, or at least the 40 or so countries that have 5G and aviation (that tends to be a near perfect overlapping Venn diagram) manage to make these things rub along. There is no doubt that in the US the spectrum being used is not identical to that being used in other places but once the airlines all started to ground their aircraft, solutions were found from somewhere. Possibly behind some stuff in the shed, or down the back of the sofa.
Cynics in the telecommunications domain were scathing in their view that this was the airlines masking their Covid-diminished crewing issues and reduced schedules, and or an attempt to strong arm still more funding out of the FAA. Over at the FCC they may not be able to communicate all that well, but they sure can read the papers.
By week end things were getting back to normal, to the extent anything can be described as that at the moment and we can all chalk this up as a learning event. That might something else we can put into our textbooks about communicating.