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Comment by Justin_K | Hacker News Reader

Super cool. United used to let passengers listen to the flight's atc comms, which I really liked. Then they merged with Continental and got rid of it. I always wondered why the took away that feature.

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They didn't take it away completely, but it's now at the flight crews discretion. You can kindly ask a flight attendant to ask the pilot if they will have channel 9 on or ask if they will.

Found this about it[0], but there is still the occasional person asking about it on FF boards and the answer is still, to politely ask the FA about it

[0] https://simpleflying.com/united-airlines-channel-9-story/

I'll have to ask next time. That said the article is quite wrong in that you can't hear conversation in the cockpit, only conversation on the active frequency. You could never and probably will never hear pilot to copilot conversation.

Guess I wasn't paying attention to it, I skimmed it since I fly United often and already knew what it actually was (not pilot conversation). Wasn't sure about posting a specific thread from www.flyertalk.com [0] probably should have just posted that. I dont usually have much luck with it, but I only remember half the time to ask.

[0] https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/...

I recently saw a video where ATC made a mistake and nearly let two planes get too close (one landing, another taking off, on crossing runways). They caught it in time (some ATC automated checking system was still doing its announcement as the controller saw and diverted them both) but hearing that as a passenger, I can imagine the panic that's not going to help anyone.

Don't know if that is the reason, or if that's even a legitimate reason (it's about your life after all, even if you're powerless to save it), but I could imagine that being a consideration.

Have an air traffic controller tell you that your about to die would seem unlikely to be a panic inducing event. The level of calm in utter carnage is very much a thing. I’d prefer not to test this theory.

That reminds me about that one JetBlue emergency landing where passengers could watch their own plane attempt a landing.

IIRC, the flight attendants disabled the system right at landing to prevent presumed panic. That decisions amusing to me since there’s a 15-30 second delay with satellite TV anyway. I can’t imagine there was a true opportunity for passengers to see anything scary in this scenario.

There's an informative video on YouTube about that JetBlue incident and the (successful) attempt to recover from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpsgn9LM0G8

Reading your comment, my flippantly ironic thought was that it's just as well real life isn't delayed from the satellite TV; that could really cause some panic in the cabin!

Here is a similar deep dive into such an incident.

https://fallows.substack.com/p/as-bad-as-it-gets-without-bod...

These happen pretty often, and go unreported. So there's not much benefit in people finding out, on the downside there's bad PR.

I do some minor piloting myself and I don't think those things go unreported often. Maybe uncontrollable dirt airports -- yes, sure.

But in class Bravo, with hundreds of souls on board, when all transmissions are recorded and public, and multiple plane watchers listen to them in real time -- not a chance.

Know-it-all PPLs on the flight giving other passengers blow by blow commentary while critiquing the captain. That and not wanting pax to think about being in an aluminum tube traveling 0.7 Mach while in said tube.

I used to have some fear of flying, and listening to channel 9 helped me get over it, because I learned more about how safe and expected turbulence was, and how familiar everyone was with the various procedures and in-flight events.

I'm not sure everyone would have the same reaction, but I found it very calming. Maybe the fact that people like to listen to ATC conversations in order to relax is a good sign for the likely effects on many passengers.

It's true that you could occasionally learn about an error or a dangerous event that you wouldn't otherwise have been aware of at all, but I also think many passengers would be impressed by how professionally problems are usually handled. I've been on two flights that had to divert (for a bird strike and a passenger medical issue, respectively) and one flight that had a missed approach and go-around (in very high crosswinds), and, while none of them had channel 9, I'm quite confident that ATC was prepared to handle these situations and that many passengers would also have been impressed to have heard those conversations.

I'm happy to admit that getting more information about what's going on wouldn't always be comfortable or reassuring to everyone, though.

Same here. I’ve watched a lot of air accident breakdowns and read more than a few NTSB reports. The way safety is a core of commercial aviation is just incredible and so far beyond everything I see in daily life. The way cars are handle is positively horrific.

0.7 mach would be pretty slow for a commercial airliner these days. Mach 0.8-0.9 is typical now.

Written like a know-it-all PPL.

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