[HN Gopher] ACARS Drama
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ACARS Drama
Author : jmwilson
Score : 163 points
Date : 2025-03-20 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acarsdrama.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (acarsdrama.com)
| jparishy wrote:
| Very cool. I love these feeds.
|
| A very common flow for me when I see something weird on adsb or
| fr24 is to grab the ICAO address of the plane and search it on
| https://app.airframes.io/ to see if it was sending out any ACARS
| messages so I can... see what the drama was ha!
|
| It's a really fun hobby if you find this stuff interesting. You
| can pick up an SDR online for like $30 USD and be able to do all
| this without Internet, above your own home.
| jcims wrote:
| (and if you set it up on a raspberry pi and run it full time
| you can get a free business plan subscription to flightradar24)
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/add-coverage
| mmastrac wrote:
| Oh Jesus:
|
| HOWDY, WERE GOING TO NEED LEO MEET THE AIRPLANE FOR A PERSON
| TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX.
| wulfstan wrote:
| Yep someone's going to be getting a little chat with the cops
| for getting handsy. And at 7am for goodness sakes!
| mmastrac wrote:
| Update:
|
| DISPMORNING. NEED LEO TO MEET THE AC. A PAX WAS
| INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX IN THE ROW INFRONT OF
| THEM. THE FAS HAVE THE SEAT NUMBER ANDMANIFEST. FYI AND THX
| H8crilA wrote:
| What about appropriate, consensual touching?
| genewitch wrote:
| They don't record passengers' handshakes, no
| kotaKat wrote:
| Guess we can move from ACARS to ATC in a little bit...
|
| https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=SEA
| kindatrue wrote:
| Could've been an international (overnight) flight. Maybe
| alcohol was involved.
| maverwa wrote:
| nope, flight FFT2407 from Las Vegas to Seattle, 6:49 take
| off, 9:30 planned landing.
| bombcar wrote:
| What started in Vegas didn't stay there, and got ACARS'd.
| SSLy wrote:
| someone on loads of blow still in their blood veins
| petesergeant wrote:
| that's nothing https://au.news.yahoo.com/woman-caught-
| breastfeeding-cat-pla...
| buildbot wrote:
| "HI. LAV A FLUSH HAS FAILED. NO SUCTION. CHEERS"
|
| Well, that would be awkward.
| MR4D wrote:
| Did anyone else mistakenly read this as "LCARS" and expect
| something related to the Star Trek interface?
|
| Clearly I need more coffee.
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| Exactly.
| ape4 wrote:
| Maybe someday ACARS will support lowercase
| sdh9 wrote:
| Why does it need to? What value does that add?
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Looks like you can "feed the drama" by sending unauthenticated
| JSON messages to an endpoint that the site specifies?
|
| Fortunately, nobody on the internet has the urge to break things
| just for the hell of it, so I'm sure everything will be fine.
| kylemh wrote:
| aaaand it's dead
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I knew watching every mentour pilot and blancolirio video would
| serve me well. I haven't yet heroically landed a plane after the
| pilots both had heart attacks, but at least I can read most of
| these.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Interesting that the keyboard for these[0] is not a QWERTY
| keyboard but instead has the buttons arranged alphabetically.
| That must be a pain in the ass to type in. Is that because the
| tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? Do
| newer planes have QWERTY?
|
| 0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp
|
| Unrelated, this one is cute:
| https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209
| joezydeco wrote:
| Even if you did QWERTY, how would you arrange it in a 5x6
| matrix?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| I was imagining the panel could be designed such that you
| wouldn't need to fit it in a 5x6 matrix.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Avionics is the area that is the _least_ tolerant of
| radical redesigns in human interfaces. This FMC form factor
| has been around a long time. There _are_ newer ACARS /FMC
| systems that have an actual QWERTY keyboard.
|
| https://www.aviationtoday.com/2016/04/27/spectralux-
| launches...
|
| Remember, also, that not all countries use QWERTY. France,
| one of the homes of Airbus, uses AZERTY. What should they
| do about their keyboards?
| cccbbbaaa wrote:
| Use bepo, of course! More seriously, Airbus uses qwerty
| since at least the A380. This means that the A350 and the
| A330, two aircrafts that share a type rating, do not use
| the same layout.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY
| was the standard?
|
| QWERTY predates electronic devices.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| True. Makes the decision even more baffling.
| esoterae wrote:
| Keyboards in aircraft instrumentation certainly do NOT
| predate electronic devices. Given that one-handed operation
| for instrumentation is almost always the primary mode of
| interaction, and instrument panels are really just face-
| plates on quite deep electronic device containers, the idea
| of a widescreen panel hole profile just to fit the input
| keys in a different format/aspect ratio does not make
| sense.
|
| Some of the most interesting aviation research in the past
| few decades have been around human factors like psychology,
| perception, and cognition. If there was some substantial
| effect to having the buttons be arranged in a different
| pattern, I do legitimately hope it would have been found by
| now.
|
| Do keep in mind these devices are cost-prohibitive in the
| extreme to design, build, and certify. The idea of having
| separate, parallel processes in order to have a different
| button layout between regional devices creates a thousand
| headaches of its own, both before and after production. The
| issue goes even further, in that just the FAA alone
| requires simulators of these aircraft to have replicated
| button look and feel criteria that would make your head
| spin. Is there even going to be a question as to if you're
| going to have to have two simulators? Will type-ratings be
| transferrable? Will there be separate differences training
| and/or currency requirements between the two distinct input
| methods?
|
| Some or even most of those answers might turn out favorably
| for manufacturers or operators or pilots. But just having
| to ask them drives costs up considerably.
| buildsjets wrote:
| QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical
| devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer
| overflow.
| gschizas wrote:
| That's mostly a myth.
|
| I've seen a YouTube video in the last couple of years that
| explained the true origins of the QWERTY keyboard.
| Originally, the keyboard was alphabetical and arranged two
| rows, based on a piano keyboard, the black keys went A-N
| left to right, and the white keys went O-Z, right to left.
| Then it got shortened in width and the letters got folded
| over (this is why at the right edge of the middle row you
| have HJKL and the bottom row has MN reversed as NM).
|
| I'm not 100% sure this was the video I saw, but it has some
| of the points: https://youtu.be/c8f6us-Sjlo
| brontitall wrote:
| This was posted a few days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43381088
| esoterae wrote:
| I always thought of it as more of a race condition.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| > QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical
| devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer
| overflow.
|
| This is sort of like saying a c compiler is there to stop
| you from dereferencing null pointers
| the__alchemist wrote:
| A lot of fighters have it even worse. Buttons around an MPD, or
| a T9-like system where number keys are overloaded for ~3 values
| each.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yikes... "Type for me, Goose"
| mulmen wrote:
| The RIO was literally only there to push buttons. The
| weapon systems were too complicated to operate while also
| flying the plane.
| dhosek wrote:
| I think it's long past time to reorder the alphabet to follow
| QWERTY order. It will make keyboarding much easier for
| children. We just need to write a new alphabet song.
| netsharc wrote:
| Different languages have different keyboards (e.g. QWERTZ or
| AZERTY). I wonder what problems would happen if we reordered
| the alphabet...
|
| For one thing the ASCII ordering is now suddenly jumbled up.
| Maybe our great supreme intellectual leader Elon will issue
| Magacode to supersede Unicode, kym epcy epc ngy vky yxcohy!
| lxgr wrote:
| Sorting lists alphabetically would produce vastly different
| results by language, for one thing.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Already a thing for some languages. For example, Hawaiian
| sorts its letters as A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W.
| jval43 wrote:
| Collation rules already differ by locale or language in
| many programming languages, libraries, and applications.
|
| This is necessary because the order of words or
| characters is sometimes only sensibly defined if you know
| the language a text is written in.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Fun fact about character ordering:
|
| Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated v and
| w as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess
| whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled
| with a v or a w. The two letters were often combined in the
| collating sequence as if they were all v or all w, until
| 2006 when the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista
| (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dictionary) declared a
| change.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet
| sooperserieous wrote:
| Oooohhh!!! Back in the day I had an "opportunity" to implement
| a virtual CDU interface, even re-created that font to do it. It
| talked to a real FMC (and later anything on the ARINC 629 bus).
| Good times :)
| cccbbbaaa wrote:
| I believe the A350 has it in qwerty.
| lxgr wrote:
| The A380 even has a stowable full-size keyboard, as far as I
| know! Not sure if it can input data into this particular
| system, though.
| q3k wrote:
| > That must be a pain in the ass to type in.
|
| You get used to it, same as you got used to a QWERTY keyboard.
|
| (note: this based on my experience often interacting with
| another device with an alphabetic keyboard, not an FMC)
| sooperserieous wrote:
| You do get used to it, but also the workflow is not entering
| words as much as it is things like waypoint codes, and a lot
| of numeric bits, which is why the number pad has its familiar
| layout.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > That must be a pain in the ass to type in.
|
| Only until you're used to it. Then it's just as natural as
| switching between a keypad with a 1 in the top left versus one
| with a 7 in the top left. Your brain just takes the wheel.
| bombcar wrote:
| Many people don't realize that a phone number pad and a
| keyboard one are opposite. They just use them.
| sdh9 wrote:
| You don't really need to type long form text on it. The primary
| use of the keyboard on the MCDU is for the flight management
| computer, and aviation fix names are 3 or 5 letters at most.
| That is the primary design case for the keyboard. ACARS is
| secondary, and on a typical flight only a few long-form text
| messages are sent.
|
| Every aircraft that I've ever flown has an alphabetical
| keyboard. Typically horizontal space is valuable, yet vertical
| space is less valuable, so it's easy to make the keyboard long
| but not wide. However, as others pointed out, it seems to be
| changing in newer jets.
| closewith wrote:
| QWERTY isn't universally used internationally, whereas the
| alphabet order is.
| tyingq wrote:
| There are ACARS devices with qwerty. Like
| https://www.aeroexpo.online/prod/spectralux-corporation/prod...
|
| Changing anything significant on an aircraft requires
| certification though. So you typically have to have a very good
| cause to do it.
| lxgr wrote:
| My guess would be: QWERTZ touch typing was not a common skill
| in most pilots at the time these were introduced, and an ABC
| layout is slightly more ergonomical than QWERTZ for users not
| familiar with either.
|
| Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin
| older pilots' muscle memory.
| weard_beard wrote:
| <3 These are the jokes folks.
| wylie39 wrote:
| What's the legality of this? I was thinking of doing something
| similar but with POCSAG but from what I can tell it would be
| illegal because of ECPA(Electronic Communications Privacy Act)
| jcims wrote:
| PT REPORTS CHEST PAIN RM318
| outworlder wrote:
| It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted. Just like all non-
| military aircraft comms.
| lxgr wrote:
| > It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted.
|
| But so were analog mobile phones and pagers, and in some
| countries, even receiving unencrypted voice ATC radio isn't
| legal.
| lazide wrote:
| The whole point of ATC is that everyone in the area is able
| to figure out what is going on by listening in.
|
| What/how is making listening in on that illegal ok?
| lxgr wrote:
| Not sure about the details, but I suspect it's more a
| consequence of laws on telecommunication privacy from
| analog days being very generic than a specific intention
| to make ATC listening illegal. Opt-out vs. opt-in by
| frequency and/or purpose, essentially.
|
| That said, it's supposedly still being very much enforced
| against e.g. planespotters at airshows in some places -
| no idea what the point of that is.
| jcims wrote:
| Message: NO PROBLEM....DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DELTA PILOTS IT TAKES
| TO TAXI A PLANE AND NOT RUN INTO ANYTHING...
|
| https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114160399911092776
| billyhoffman wrote:
| !!!
|
| Message: DISPMORNING. NEED LEO TO MEET THE AC. A PAX WAS
| INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX IN THE ROW INFRONT OF THEM.
| THE FAS HAVE THE SEAT NUMBER ANDMANIFEST. FYI AND THX
|
| https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114195325338601167
|
| [edit: Ahh, its a Frontier flight]
| https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/keyword/N387FR
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Related: Does anyone have the full message from Korean Air Flight
| 085 that contained letters HJK?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085
| MBCook wrote:
| Most of the messages I get.
|
| By why show the ones with only an ETA and FOB? Is FOB code for
| something interesting?
| isabanin wrote:
| FOB is Fuel On Board. Nothing interesting.
| MBCook wrote:
| Ah that makes sense. Though it certainly doesn't explain why
| those messages are worth showing.
|
| Edit: oh they seem like small numbers. Like 24 or 36, I'm
| assuming hundreds of pounds?
|
| Could it be they are displayed because they have relatively
| little fuel left?
|
| Example:
| https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114196005649300274
| kotaKat wrote:
| Just routine updates to base for routing as needed.
| Hundreds/thousands of pounds on board. They plan their fuel
| usage fairly meticulously so base will use it in further
| calculations.
| zX41ZdbW wrote:
| Also interesting to see, is a map of all ADS-B emergency
| broadcasts, which can be: ['general', 'nordo', 'downed',
| 'lifeguard', 'reserved', 'unlawful', 'minfuel']:
| https://adsb.exposed/?zoom=5&lat=38.3590&lng=-97.5146&query=...
| refulgentis wrote:
| There's something a bit off about this:
|
| - I know what ACARS, is and understood _less_ of what 's going on
| here after reading the "What is ACARS drama?"
|
| - It's an uncomfortable mirror, a reminder that not everything
| has to become puerile entertainment. I wouldn't call anything I
| read in the messages "drama"
|
| - The odd obsession over framing it as "drama" & humorous, to the
| point it is difficult to understand the "what is this?", and
| collaborators are invited to "Feed the drama"
|
| - Open endpoint for anyone to contribute "drama", meaning, anyone
| can feed anything they want, into this very official-looking
| feed, without any sourcing / clarification / anything
|
| I see how this can read quickly as negativity unfairly directed
| at creative spirit, the motive power behind man.
|
| What tipped me over into "well, it's worth expressing the ick" is
| that a full 20% of the comments, 14/64, are communicating,
| speculating, then riffing on, a passenger being molested.
| financetechbro wrote:
| I think you are overthinking a fun little project with a
| memeish name. This stuff is just super fascinating and
| entertaining to aviation nerds. And using "drama" in the name
| is just typical hyperbole and almost like gen z / internet
| slang that you find online.
|
| Comments riffing on the LEO request for PAX TOUCHING PAX is
| just typical forum stuff. Not something that I condone and
| somewhat unsavory, but it's the internet and people riff on
| much more horrible stuff online. Doesn't mean it's okay but
| just not a specific flaw of this project, imo...
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