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Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

The only complaint is it uses phonetics for everything multiple times in each transmission, I'm a radio guy, I would use phonetics once, then otherwise spelled out letters - aka, "whiskey lima foxtrot" and WLF the next time I needed to say it.

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This is not how communication is done in aviation. Instead, it’s common to abbreviate to the last three alphanumerics of tail numbers (so “niner alpha bravo” for N789AB) after the first call — but this is conditional on not having a potentially confusing other aircraft on frequency (N129AB), and the system here can’t reasonably know that, so must take the conservative option.

I took issue with calling out the airport, multiple times in full phonetics, both at the beginning and the end of the transmission. All other callsigns, perfectly reasonable.

At an untowered field, saying the airport name at the beginning and end of each transmission is standard phraseology.

In phonetics?q

Typically, at an untowered airport, it's something closer to "{airport_colloquial_name} traffic, {your_aircraft_type} {your_n_number}. {MESSAGE}, {airport_colloquial_name} traffic"

So, "Columbia traffic, Cessna november one two three alfa bravo [N123AB], three mile final, full stop, runway one eight, Columbia traffic"

At a towered airport, you'd say "Columbia tower" instead, and you don't have to repeat it at the end of your message.

If anything, the tail number does not matter nearly as much. A plane with auto land presumably already has ADSb out (almost certainly 1090ES), is squawking 7700, and is probably already IFR anyway. As in this situation, the controllers knew well in advance they had an emergency inbound and who it was. At an uncontrolled field, I need something to tag (robotic "bravo-romeo" is plenty) and a relative position. Bonus if it does the math and predicts landing time, which it does.

Frankly, it should know (like I have to) if it's going to auto land at a towered field or uncontrolled, and adjust as necessary to those circumstances.

I’m not sure I agree. Not sure I disagree, either. If I’m another pilot in the air when this occurs, it feels like the most important things for me to know are (1) stay the hell away from the runway, and the announced approach, for a while; (2) only a single aircraft is doing an emergency autoland currently; (3) assume that the aircraft will need medical response while on runway (no auto-taxi) so if I was planning on landing in the next half hour or so, go to alternate. (1) and (3) are well covered, but (2) is subtle — /today/, the chance of two aircraft doing an emergency autoland at the same field at the same time is negligible, but it’s still something both I and the system designers need to think about.

In aviation you only use phonetics, hams are much less consistent about it so it looks weird from the outside.

I'd actually argue that Aviation is the outlier among Part 90, Amateur, and Public Safety users. The general rule in most radio services is using both phonetics and not, as to try to balance intelligibility and communications density.

It's an outlier because typically the comms cycle is very fast and only a single cycle. The radios are also quite bad and there isn't room for errors that you'd normally correct naturally in the context of a longer conversation

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