probably asleep......
 

I heard this on 121.50. The interceptors asked the crew to acknowledge by waving their hands out of the left cockpit window or rocking the wings - took a few calls by the interceptors to get a reply from the crew.

Damn! - it certainly woke us up and we were awake!!

Great circle route LLBG-EBBR has a 100nm stretch that goes through airspace of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria in short order. About 12 minutes at cruise in a 744?

"If it's 13:17, this must be Slovenia."

Yeah...I agree with the comments regarding possible volume levels all turned down etc, etc.

But...are they not required to actually transmit something, like, to initiate a call!

I jest here, to much cynicism I guess!

Probably not,as usually transpoders are switched off approaching civil.

Mr Rotum (thread starter)....

What is your source?

Just interested.

And I would hazard a guess that if it were possible to compare whatever is the truth of what happened and why with all other similar incidents.......then the Koreans would barely be middle ranking. In our little world here in OZ I know personally (no it wasn't me!) of 2 incidents of over an hour where an a/c was out of comms. VH registered and flwon by Australians.

good info, Mariner! Just out of interest, what do you press thereafter to cancel the warning?

Absence of Comms
 

To EMIT and others who think that an absence of comms for 1+40 (or even 0+40) is no big deal (as in "let's not make an elephant out of a mosquito") I have news for you. From the ATC point of view (especially in busy, crowded airspace) it's a big deal.

I would suggest you visit such an ACC; sit, watch and listen for a bit. Then ponder what would be going on in terms of re-routing and re-clearing of altitudes to accomodate the a/c that is "not participating". ATC is much more of a dynamic endeavor than many realise (even high-time pilots); so the actions that must be taken significantly increase the workload, the inconvenience to other traffic, and indeed the stress level as -- despite ICAO and JAR -- one is never quite sure what the aircraft may do, and so allowance must be made for that.

Been there (at the ATC position) too many times.

Grizz

Anyone in Germany knowing of an investigation into this so we can get the facts confirmed (1h40 !!!)??

A rumour with a Pilot @ my firm states they were off for 14 Minutes and NOT1 Hour 40 Minutes or 1 Hour 14 Minutes!

This fitts well to the fact (ist it confirmed) that they crossed 4 countries southwest of Germany @ cruise-speed which would take approx. 20 Minutes.

I really doubt that they have been off for 1:40 Hrs without military interference until reaching Germany.

Crew Alertness monitor
 

MTBUR;

Reset the alarm with one of the Master WARNING/CAUTION Reset Switches on the glareshield.
Using any button or switch gets the time for the alertness monitor reset to zero.

Good feature for a long haul aircraft. I assume Hairbrush has a similar alarmclock.

But I doubt if this was the real problem here, could be just a blown up story. Hard to believe you can fly across Europe for that long without getting someone on the line.

Hi dear pilots,
may be this little data from my SBS-1 box can help:

a/c HL7602, B744 (freighter)
first occurenece: "06.02.2009 17:03:34"
last occurence: "06.02.2009 17:39:57"
call "KAL577" -if an 8 is added it would fit for KAL8577
first latitude"48.72482"
last latitude"50.55852"
first longitude"12.92182"
last longitude "6.55572"
first speed "448.8"
last speed "433.5"
first altitude "38000" feet
last altitude "29925" feet

A speed of 448 ktas over ground is around 830km/h..., 14min "off time" would make 194km. If the a/c would have heading northwest (TLV-BRU), so it might have crossed West Hugary, Nothern Slowenia, Austria and at least the estern part of Bavaria:E in that time. I have no record for an MIL a/c fitting to this altitude at that time.

Cheers Michael

Big deal
 

Grizz,

I am aware of the amount of uncertainty and workload that a non-responding crew is causing to ATC.

What I mainly attacked is the general assumption that the pilots must have been asleep. Certainly, like I stated, they could have sooner developed some suspicion that ATC was awfully quiet for a long time, but then, if you enter Serbian airspace from Bulgaria, at night you usually get a direct right to the Serbian Hungarian border, a long way to go without any other call necessary. Couple that with inadvertant turning down of the volume controls of the loudspeaker, weel, you can fill in the rest. Close to 30 minutes would be the stretch through Serbia, without any call necessary.

Out of interest - can you reduce volume in comm radio down to 0, or not? At my ATC unit, even if you turn the knob max left, it's still not 0, you will here transmissions - and there's also a light above the knob that turns on if there's an incomming tx in such cases, to alert you.

criss - volume can be reduced to zero, otherwise you'd have up to 5 radios broadcasting in the cockpit.

Routinuely monitor 121.5 but that gets turned down/off if it's interferring with monitoring the primary ATC radio.

Often the 'too quiet' to 'too loud' adjustment is very, very tiny. And from 'too quiet' to 'off' is also very small. It's not uncommon to see the other guy answering and you realize your volume has shifted to the point of being 'off'.

Thanks. BTW - we have 5-6 radios up at the same time in the tower cab:ok:

Don't know about the B747, but on the B757 not only can you turn the vol down to 0, you can deselect all three radios, and can also detune them - there are quite a few "gotcha's" to catch you out - hence when it's quite I always give a little click on the mic every 5 mins or so to check the speakers are still working, and if I've really not heard anything for a while, then request a radio check.

I managed to lose contact with London once due to me being inexperienced, and having a muppet moment - I now do everything I can to try not to repeat that heart stopping moment when I realised what I'd done - but it doesn't guarantee it wont happen again sadly!

DW.

The old adage about needing a pilot and a dog in automated aircraft springs to mind. Pilot to talk on wireless, monitor things and feed dog; dog to bite pilot if he tries to disconnect anything automatic.

Or falls asleep.

One teeny problem with that idea on a Korean aircraft though......

BEagle :ok:


Air Canine Rule Number 1. Stay clear of the Galley.

You might have 6 radio's in your atc cab, but you can't misstune
them to thousands of different frequencies at once.

Sure you can, and you can turn any frequency off too :)