Fears for public safety after airspace glitch
Search & rescue may have been compromised after link fails between cockpit and controllers
SA’s air traffic control management services suffered a text-based communication outage last week, raising public safety worries among pilots and prompting the sole authority behind the control of the country’s airspace to launch an investigation.
During the incident there was a failure of the so-called Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) — a system through which air traffic controllers can transmit messages to the cockpit as an alternative to voice communications — resulting in a huge area of airspace over the Indian Ocean extending from the continent down to the Antarctic being without a proper controller for at least 24 hours between December 6 and 7...
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