Air Traffic Control helps pilot to land a plane by SMS

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Now here’s a story I’m glad I didn’t hear about before I went on my holidays!  I think if I had, I would have ended up walking and swimming to the UK instead of flying!

Air Traffic Control at Cork in Ireland successfully helped a pilot to land his crippled plane by sending him SMS messages to his mobile phone.   They were left with no other option because the twin-engined Piper plane “lost all onboard electrical power, communications and weather radar”.

The plane was brought safely to the ground and I’m sure the movie rights have already been bought.   Nicolas Cage is probably already being contacted to play the role of the pilot (“there has to be explosives in each SMS message and the air traffic controller has to be a covert terrorist!”)

So there you go.  SMS messages are not just used for dumping boyfriends and girlfriends.  Or for unlocking public toilets in Finland.  They can be used for landing crippled aircraft too.

Via The Irish Times