ACARS and Dispatchers/Flight ops

[G-BPEC]

Hi,

I have a question for any dispatchers/flight ops people who have experience of working with ACARS. my question is what happens to the message once it is recieved by you? How is it recived and what does it look like, and more to the point how do you decipher the necessary information from that jumbled up mess of letters and digits that most ACARS messages seem to take? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Also, can anyone help me with a long standing query, and BA people perhaps? On a BA ACARS message, usually from 75/3/6 7's, you tend to get something that looks like this:-

DAVCS KIJUE
Are these the pilots names or something?
Thanks a lot in advance

G-BPEC
BA 1404

[offload]

The only ACARS messaging I have ever used directly was SITA based - tap in the Sita address, add AUM (aircraft uplink message) plus reg and away you go. Message prints out on the flightdeck. Air to ground came out the same way - maybe I was just spoilt. The only things we would ever have any trouble decoding were NOTAMs.
offload

[Rescue3]

G-BPEC. correct they are the crew 5 letter identifiers

[G-BPEC]

Rescue3, Is there a way to deduce the crew's names from these 5 letter identifyers?

Thanks
G-BPEC

[Rescue3]

The normal naming convention is first 3 letters of surname, last letter of surname, then first initial.
John Smith would be SMIHJ..obviously there are some abnormal ones due to duplication.

[JBravo]

What the hell are you doing with acars messages, that aren't intended to be received by an outsider?

Nothing personal, but this reminds me to not send company-sensative messages through acars.

And to answer your question. The acars we send from ops here in amsterdam are normally plain language. And if you sometimes can't understand what it says, it could be because it is something typical for that flight, but the dispatcher knows what to do with it. Sometimes I don't understand an acars for a collegue of mine, if I don't know what was going on with that particular flight. Besides, we normally send it in dutch. Looks like encrypted language to you maybe ;)
Oh, and we receive it on plain paper on a printer, if that's what you mean..

[G-BPEC]

J Bravo,

ACARS equipment is widely available now, all you need is a PC with a sound card, a wire and a program which will decode them which you can download freeware on the net. For people like me, who do have a 100% GENUINE interest, then this is all very good, but I agree with you 100% that if these messages fall into the wrong hands and are company sensative then there could be problems.

Also, i was wondering more what they come out LIKE, and how you get the info you require from that given, eg. that mass of mubers/letters surely must mean something?

Thanks for your answer anyway, not taken personally.

Tom/G-BPEC

[This message has been edited by G-BPEC (edited 27 January 2001).]

[JBravo]

Ok G-BPEC,

Still not sure what you mean, but I'll just give it a shot trying to explain.
I think I have never received an acars that I couldn't read (to understand is something else). Maybe it is because it is coded and decoded by our company-software. It is done automatically I think, because we as dispatchers don't have to decode it. And we don't receive it on our printers like you do on your home-PC. It isn't a process that I'm involved in. Just maybe you are using the wrong decoding program. Just an example of how an acars looks like if we receive it:

**177
good evening
can you give as an
update on the vulc-
ano situation.
regards,
crew **177

Doesn't seem like a mass of numbers/letters, does it? And every ACARS we receive looks like this...

Hope this explains your question
regards
JB

[PiperChauffeur]

ACARS is often used for LS (BA have been using it for years). When looking at an ACARS Loadsheet you woulden't understand a thing of it, unless you also knew a regular loadsheet.
The same goes for weatherreports. You can send METARs or TAFs to ACs who are beyond a VOLMET, but to understand these, you need to know how to decipher a weatherreport.
Widely used for departuremessages - but those are very easy to read, even for a "non-ailiener".
Hope this helps
PC

[This message has been edited by PiperChauffeur (edited 05 February 2001).]

[CI300]

To add to that, engine and system parameters are passed to and from engineering. Tends to look just like a random bunch of numbers.
Faxes can also be sent, as one av mag discovered. They published it in the 'funnies' inc the fax number. So treat acars like a postcard.

[mutt]

We use ACARS for a number of different types of messages, a lot of them are technical and are designed to be deciphered by a computer program.
The messages sent to Flight Dispatch are usually plain text, they may appear to be in code, but at least in our case this probably has more to do with the captains lack of English.
There is nothing secret about ACARS messages, they can be monitored just as easily as a VHF or HF frequency.