Originally Posted by
HEATHROW DIRECTOR
Thing is, they don't happen all that often so they're a bit of a surprise. Must admit on the few I had, I just watched what was happening and kept other traffic out of the way.
A real cracker was the DC9 which had acknowledged the correct landing info and left the hold for a long downwind leg. He then went R/T fail and the landing runway went u/s!! Wx wasn't too good either. A certain amount of panic ensued whilst we thought of all sorts of ways to talk to the guy. Can't racall the outcome - either the runway came back as he was turning on to the ILS, or he fixed his radio at about the same time. Good oral board discussion point.
Was/is it not possible to plug into the ILS and make a broadcast? As I recall on the ILS Monitor in the TWR there was a socket into which a handset could be plugged and a voice tranmission made. Mind you we are talking some time ago!