How and where would planes land safely If air traffic control went down
In: Technology
I’m a former airline pilot. There are procedures in place for this scenario. For instance, you could have a radio failure in instrument conditions and have to be able to safely land without guidance from ATC.
About half the airports I used to fly to were only controlled for part of the day, some, never had control towers.
When you land at these airports, you make location reports on a common radio frequency that all planes using the airport speak on. So, landing isn’t a big deal.
Now, if you were flying “in the clouds” in an IFR environment, it would get a little more tricky, but it’s still a standard procedure we all train for. All IFR planes carry charts that basically show you the highways in the skies. You fly between navigation beacons in the ground at a certain altitude which protects you from terrain and other traffic. In fact, you have to fly this way in non-radar environments.
Once you arrive at your destination, you “fly the entire approach” to the airport. What this means is, generally, ATC guides you to intercept the Instrument Landing System. But, on an approach plate, there’s a path you can fly in order to intercept the ILS (or other approach) yourself.
Now of course, most planes are equipped with GPS so this procedure is even easier. When I was flying, I was in a plane that didn’t have GPS. I also flew into a lot of little airports in the mountains in W. VA, PA etc. So often times ATC would lose us on radar because of the terrain and we’d have to fly full approaches.
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