Flight 108 (1961)

this man is an airline pilot he lives about 10 miles from Idlewild and he drives to his work now you might think this is pretty dangerous work and some recent newspaper headlines might lead you to guess that this man is insurable at a rather high premium but according to the insurance companies the most dangerous part of his journey is already over Oh it says here breakfast in Karachi lunch in London supper in San Francisco and sometimes we have to add luggage in Rome today we're going to look into the crowded sky and consider air safety now it's an odd thing about the human mind that it seems to be so constituted that when you say the phrase air safety most people think of its opposite air disaster every time a plane crashes in Tibet or Kansas we are grateful that we were not aboard and yet when 450 people are killed on a holiday weekend on the highways we don't say it might have been me every day 500,000 people get off the ground take two planes and fly in all sorts of weather in all sorts of landscapes and come safely to their destinations how safe is air travel well the insurance companies who employ experts to figure risks they put it in a rather vivid way it does not cost an airline pilot one penny more to buy a life insurance policy then it costs a librarian or a grocer now the point of all this is simply that statistically aviation is one of the safest forms of transport but it's not safe enough and in some countries it's a very big issue and as you will soon see it is of special concern to the United Nations Civil Aviation started after the first world war the first airliners were converted bombers of the 1918 vintage and the first airline passengers were people moved by urgency or bravado the machines of that period were creaky and underpowered and the pilots were by today's standards deaf and blind flying was a daytime fair weather sport sometimes a desperate expedient things are now quite different for years airliners have been flying at night in weather both fair and foul and pilots have been able to supplement their physical senses with all sorts of new devices flying is busier more complex faster more important and necessary than ever before let's have some the flight which follows is typical of today's international airline procedure because Idlewild has the greatest traffic density of any airport in the world we shall focus the traffic problem by showing both a take-off and landing at the same Airport Idlewild now we're going to break the law of gravity the shape of this plane and the power of its engines is going to help us to overcome gravity by lift and to defeat drag by thrust and up front there is very skilled men are going to see that this goes according to plan check this module very particular any protective wheels clock cepted landing gear leaver down the cabin extent oxen pressure check equipment cooling control automatic oxygen panels and Mars jack circuit breakers all checked it in warning system light check comida power normal battery and DC power jack battery on electrical panel Jack then said fuel quantity and distributions division normal quantity 37,000 bill panel Jacqueline said you two meters reset hydraulic fluid full engine stopped pressure 3,000 each bottle air conditioning and pressurization panel said we will done complicated engine oil quantity technical of course but every complicated piece of equipment or procedure consists of a great number of essentially simple things things that any of us can understand anti-skid spoiler switches are passengers in wells the smoking seatbelt sign woman see exit light and even let heat off rudder and a lump in neutral the stop checklist complete at the airport terminal other men are busy making sure that our flight goes well the flight plan has been filed and approved which means that a highway has been set aside for us in the sky but pasta texting Karen Smith Roger I Delilah ground this is aaron Learjet 108 request taxi clearance peach Aaron your 10 dad walk round by the outer perimeter right turn taxiway hotel taxi to a whole chart 31 left or window in Northwest 10 they are committed to 973 time 16 of 41 oban jetta texting now texting Rogers already clear my said Roger cfq but he'll it showed of runway 13 lap traffic right here india 108 clearance atc clears there in the 01 08 by the ottawa southwest radio bacon that's the Idlewild 120 radial to Hampton 252 radial to Hampton click the 46 south Nantucket flight plan route now the men in the control top and the men up front are combining their concentration and considerable technical skill to the problem of getting us off the ground now there are several other things that we need to ensure a safe flight we have to have first obviously a well-built well-designed plane we have to have airports with long strong enough runways accurate decided we have to have an air traffic system that can separate planes both laterally and vertically we have to know a good deal about the weather all along the route preferably we should be in continuous contact with the ground which for which we have to have all kinds of navigational equipment beacons charts and so on we have to have enough all these things now whenever you read in a newspaper that there's been an air disaster one of these things much more likely a combination a rather freakish combination of these things has gone wrong they don't often go wrong last year the Airways of the world managed 108 million separate safe flights like the one we're on it was checked three my side my side bar check takeoff checklist complete okay I loved art and India jet 108 commissioned to take off there any 108 a lot are clear for takeoff 31 left here rolling what is already checked minimum power please rather we look the ones they're already rolling we've an no did yeah yeah going up it was their eye contact the parts control now want to park elem okay tracking on 120 radio Roger thank you now at this point you may well wonder what the United Nations is doing getting into civil aviation let's put it this way at this moment all around the world thousands of people are taking off from the ground the ground on which for millions of years they've learned to live on now in Europe and the Middle East Asia and Africa the air traffic density is getting worse every month and on those continents remember they have many frontiers which in the United States we do not have so that when you'll fly across Europe you cross a frontier seconds divide one language from another one system of law from another one culture from that of its neighbor now who's going to call the term what language should the pilot speak what landing instructions should be obeyed by a pilot of one country was making an emergency landing in another to bring some sense and order into this traffic jam of the world's Airways the nation's decided that they had better get together and establish a world order and that's why the United Nations is getting into it and that's why just now we are going over to Montreal Montreal Canada is the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization of the United Nations a member of the UN family specialized agency as it's called the secretary-general of EK o is a Canadian mr. Ronald McDonald pilots and controllers navigators and radar operators must today be able to speak the same language in more senses than one they must be able to understand each other whatever the nationality or the mother tongue what's more they must agree on how things are to be done the business of reaching that agreement is our problem here at the international civil aviation organization icao for short you heard about some of the services required to get a plane up in the air to keep it up there safely and to bring it down safely at its destination when it comes to international fly every one of these services is our concern how an airliner is designed and built how strong a runway must be the kinds of people who operate aircraft their training and their licensing air traffic coordination the navigators tools and maps and so on you may well ask what do we at ako do about all these things we operate no radars we fly no planes we man no airports but in our meeting rooms and around our tables their assemble the Civil Aviation administrators and experts from most of the world together they work out and agree on the minimum international standards the essential hard core of safety which then forms the practical basis for international flying by all nations flight safety is an international problem never have the airline's been so crowded with such large fast internationally moving objects and the pace is steadily increasing this problem could only be approached in an international way and it has them so you see the main problem of air safety is separating air traffic just keeping planes apart because remember a plane is not assigned a position behind another plane on a highway like an automobile it must have a clear highway all the way to its destination and with three or four planes going from point A to point B this is easy common sense takes over you'll fly left of this line I fly to the right you stay above 10,000 feet I'll stay below that's what happens in the country at large desert air strips and rural places so on but the aching problem of civil aviation today is the metropolis when it's hundreds of planes landing and leaving when you approach a metropolis the air is the sky is no longer as wide as the horizon it begins to contract into a rather cramped mesh of highways crossing intersecting running in parallel running opposite to each other then what happens well sometimes this I look I'm considering the Navy out of the way your guys got a quarter down at their ancestors but i'm using can't realities in here at trans growing 353 300 more than 17 all right here why should it maybe cause a guy off newark 15 oh you mean our getting us trips get it set up to 17 up to 17 okay this is New York control center at one of the busiest hours of the day late afternoon essentially what these men are doing is the simple but always tricky job of keeping aircraft out of each other's way okay where's Marcus five and over again five design of the and northwest oh this guy's and he is not once I hear it for 20 something like it I don't know it I don't think it's out of the way where to move 25-15 to 37 minute wait why behind 0l 863 226 Rigel on final America 341 radars are doing a vital to maintain your present heading until 30 seconds and turn left to 30 530 530 365 road runs Android heading 030 Cesaro to the kitschy VOR now it's American about me shooting up you away ohio supreme across his heart united 603 turn left immediately heading 240 for three minutes you're overtaking American combat maintaining 12 thousand a sick hey Joe saturation should always know morality was available registration plate that's provided radar is the clue to resorting out these situations and giving the controller's the information on which they can base their decisions but the radar equipment in use in civil aviation today is blind in one important respect it does not measure height and air controller generally has a good picture of the relationship between the ground plan of his airport and the moving blips which represent planes flying in the air but he does not know without getting further information but what altitudes these planes are flying it looks all the same to him where the one is at 500 feet another at 50,000 or and this is the hazard whether both are at five thousand research is at present underway on radar equipment that will measure altitude proposals have been presented to a KO and the first experimental tower has already been built but the use of these devices on airlines is still several years away now we have a man stand bye who knows all about this kind of research and he'll be our guide to the kind of work that's being done to make tomorrow's airliners safe when they're flying at tomorrow speeds his name is Jerome literal we know what kind of air traffic system is needed one day maybe not too far off we shall have it I am with the flight safety foundation an organization dedicated to making the airway safer I've also been a consultant for AKO in Montreal how will it be different from the present system well for one thing the whole idea of using a human voice for instructions from ground to air will change that will be all automated each airplane will be allocated a moveable cube of airspace computers will probe for possible conflicts and past solutions onto the controllers only near airports will this area system of automatic control have to give way to a channel type of approach to the runways work towards this kind of automated air traffic control system is underway right now various aspects of it are being researched here in the United States other activities and related fields are being pursued in England and the Netherlands and in many other countries at some point the stage will have been reached when this system is considered ready for a regular international airline use and at that point AKA will enter the picture and the system and perhaps competing ones were developed in other countries will be brought to the conference table at montreal there will be intensive consideration of all aspects cause practicability and scope finally an agreement will be reached an agreement to which all AKO members will be asked to subscribe then the world's airlines will have taken another great step towards uniformity reliability and safety in the world's airline well that of course is all in the future and we are concerned with today or rather with tonight because we have a to get back to the ground and it seems that there's quite a bit of weather about and the pilot has asked for a GC a a ground controlled approach to add wild idle while ground control this is hair India jet 108 request GCA approach Air India 108 this is idle while radar hear you loud and clear how do you hear me I'd want from Air India 108 hear you loud and clear Air India 10 in radar contact 11 miles southwest of the airport heading 0 10 here in the 108 if no transmissions receive for a period of five seconds on final proceed to and holy toe 1500 before we complete the final landing let's pause and look at the role that a KO plays in it i am john bell ringer of the ação Technical Secretariat the most critical phase of flight is the final approach to land and in this connection the instrument landing system was adopted by KO is an international standard some 12 years ago and today it serves the airlines on more than 400 runways of the world's airports additionally at a number of the larger international airports a precise radar system called ground controlled approach or GCA is used to guide a pilot by the spoken word to a point from which he can land visually AKO has developed technical specifications for GCA which ensure that all installations will perform alike wherever they are located without the assistance of ILS and GCA many flights would need to be diverted to other aerodromes where the weather conditions are more favorable but this would be both expensive to the airline and inconvenient to the air passenger now let's watch and see how the jet aircraft you've been following is talked down to a safe landing Air India 108 TURN RIGHT heading 0 40 they sent to 1000 x 1 Roger and it yet 108 okay 1500 feet maintaining only of 108 is 1500 feet maintaining here India 108 now on final do not acknowledge further transmissions Air India 1089 miles from touchdown 300 feet right of course TURN RIGHT heading 0 45 Air India 108 TURN RIGHT heading 0 for 7 on course eight miles from touchdown Cathy 10 8 7 miles from touchdown on course heading 0 for 7 here India 108 six and one-half miles from touchdown on course approaching glide path Air India 1086 miles from touchdown on course here India 10 85 miles from touchdown on glide path on course begin descent here india 108 75 feet above glide path just write a tea set here in the 10 a-3 one-half miles from touchdown on course on bypass three miles from touchdown on course on flight path there in the 10 way clear to land runway 4 right garen near 10 light passing the outer marker cleared to land runway 4 right win north northeast 5 knots here in the 108 2 miles from touchdown on course on glide path one and one half miles from touchdown on course on glide path one mile from touchdown I course aren't like path will approach lights on course on light path over the end of the runway on course aren't like path take over bisley bridge approach your full flaps full flap I don't want radar just another landing just another flight strip to be cleared from the control board just another routine bread-and-butter miracle completed ladies and gentlemen that was an international zone study of the United Nations role in air traffic safety together with a modest hint that airborne people of all countries would not be as safe as they are if the United Nations had not its own international civil aviation organization goodbye