Emergency Landing on Delta flight

I'm guessing you lost sat reception giving you false speed readings. Planes don't fly faster than the speed of sound over the continental US too often. But a pretty hair-raising story none the less.

That sounds reasonable. I fly a lot and use the GPS and haven't lost reception so far with the GPSr at the window. I was looking at the sat screen to view the altitude and had bars on most of the sats. The times I lost reception on the ground by going inside it gave an alert that the signal is weak. But perhaps it did somehow not keep up since we were moving fast.

I'll say "hair-raising"!

Glad to hear ya made it safely!!

Did you ever find out what was wrong with the plane? Hopefully it wasnt faulty instrument readings because of interference from someone's electronic devices.

Your ground speed of over 900 MPH is a definite error...

Sometimes - in liue of a holding pattern - pilots will ask for and accept 'delaying vectors' from ATC. These vectors will often seem arbitrary as they sometimes snake left, righ and double-back on themselves. They serve the same purpose as a hold, but they are not as pretty on a map.

... the horror of being an informed passenger.

I an new to this - pretty slick idea of firing up your GPS on the plane. Older models probably would not get signal but the new ones would. I'll try this next week! Thx!

Just be sure the airline (or... the pilot) will allow folks to use the GPS on board.

Or if you have a model with an MP3 player they won't notice.

I hadn't considered that-

I'm riding the fence on this one..
I can certainly see the point about misinformation or technical descreptancy....however, that airspeed might just be the case on a downward descent.

The times I have flown and popped out my eMap...showed speeds anywhere from 250 - 620....tailwind, running late and making up time, etc.

YIKES!!

Do airlines allow you to use GPS on the plane I doubt it really interferes with the plane they have been saying that for years and it isn't true I am sure it freaks out other passengers though.

Delta specifically allows the use of GPS above 10,000 feet. It is stated in the back of the in-flight magazine.

Check out this website http://gpsinformation.net/airgps/airgps.htm
It lists which airlines officially approve the use of gps receivers during flight

The GPS would display ground speed, not the airspeed.

And I doubt an airline could achieve 900+ MPH ground speed, they would have to have a 400 mph tail wind.

A very useful list. I have bookmarked the site for future reference.

Thanks

I'd like to see someone in the military take one onto a fighter jet and see what it reads....Although, I guess it would breach security protcols to display the true speed of something like the F18 that can hit 1300+ MPH...

Yeah, im pretty sure it would!

[-Breach security, that is-]

As an instructor for a major legacy airline, I have the flight operations manual as part of my flight bag. Our FOM specifically allows the use of GPS above 10,000 ft as long as it has no externally connected (wired, stuck to window type) antenna. As far as the enormous speed reported by another user, the maximum ground speed that one would see at altitude would be dependent on the winds. I have seen 600smh+ with a massive westerly tailwind but usually in the 500smh+ range.

"The GPS would display ground speed, not the airspeed."

How accurate would this report be for an expected arrival? These GPSs adjust to delays, so what happens on a plane during assent and decent when it comes to arrival time?

The airspeed is really only of interest to the pilot. This is especially true when taking off and landing. As a passenger, I just want to know the ground speed.

I flew to Hawaii last February and one of the legs of the trip was from Los Angeles to the big island.. During the flight my GPS showed that the ground speed was over 600 Mph most of the way.

As winstonw mentions in his post above. usually the speeds you see are in the 500 Mph range. We must have had a good tailwind because we arrived 20 minutes early

I was using a Magellan eXplorist which of course displays the arrival time. It was pretty well right on. It let me know that we were going to arrive early before the pilot came on the intercom and announced the fact to the rest of the passengers.

Great story and information.

I really think that the FAA needs to take a look at these electronic devices that can interupt the flight deck. I know Mythbusters did a show that proved that there is no effect on the instruments in the flight deck. Hey we have really big problems if a little cell phone that has less then a watt of problem can take down a plane.

It is a pretty well established fact that modern electronics won't bother most aircraft instruments. What the FAA is afraid of, and no amount of scientific testing will convince them of is that fact. For many years the electronics in aircraft were rather shoddy in their construction and shielding, after all there was nothing around them to cause or receive interference.

The shoddy radios and navigation devices are pretty much replaced now, but there still MIGHT be some pilot in a fully restored 1930's Ford Trimotor carrying passengers and that plane's radios or navigation devices MIGHT be affected. So, until all antique aircraft no longer are capable of flight they will ban the use of electronics until the aircraft is fully established in flight (above 10K feet) or is taxing on the ground toward the gate.

It's either that or there will be snowball fights in some place that's described as being in a lake of fire.

Actually, that's been done a number of times, starting with the first handheld GPS receivers years ago. In the mid 1990s I worked in the NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office, the military's main agency for developing and procuring GPS satellites and receivers. The first commercial handheld GPS receivers were coming out then (I still have a Garmin 40 in the closet), and although it was technically against the rules, we got a lot of scuttlebutt from the field that military pilots were taking along commercial GPSs in the cockpit of those military planes that didn't have the military GPS receivers installed yet.

Also, one time the Russians sent over a military air demonstration team (like our Air Force Thunderbirds or Navy Blue Angels) to tour the US. One of our guys went to one of the team's first shows in the CONUS, and noticed something taped to the top of the canopy of one of the Russian fighter jets parked for display. He wandered over and recognized that it was a small commercial external patch GPS antenna, and after nosing around found out they had a US commercial handheld unit in the cockpit. He snapped some pictures and sent them to us. We thought this was very interesting, since the Russians had developed Glonass as their version of a satellite navigation system. I don't recall the brand, but in those days the main GPS companies with commercial products were Magellan, Trimble, and Garmin. I think the Russians had a Magellan.

http://www.groundspeedrecords.com/

Hi,
I am a airline mechanic...as for the issue of electronics devices, there is one type of electronic that did cause interference that was found on a 737...it was one model of the palm pilot with 1/4th or 1/2 wattage transmitting power. It only occured when sending out a SMS message.

The crew noticed the screens were flickering and the comms was giving heavy static, it happened again until the annoucement was made to turn off all electronics devices.

It continued a few seconds later again, the captain found a passgener in first class using a palm pilot and took note of the model type. Then informed Boeing about it later on.

Boeing brought the same one in question and tried it, they were suprised to see it did cause a interference. Even with no broken wire shielding it still did cause interference...broken or not.

Not sure if the FAA knows about this one or maybe they did and want to play safe and declared all electronics devices to be turned off.

WOW!

So what would be the indicated groundspeed onboard the Concorde on the way to London or Paris at maximum airspeed?

I don't know... but it would depend on what kind of head (or tail) wind it was encountering at the time-

And take out a fresh pair of pants and underwear,then make a stop on the planes lavatory before deplaning after that ride.
932 MPH during one of the descents in a airliner would make your body do things that would require that change of clothes.

The last "retirement" flight occurred on 26 November 2003.

http://books.google.com/books?id=bs9EbQ6pdRQC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA...

Wow, pretty scary stuff. I'll be flying to Europe in a few weeks. Will ask the pilot if I can use the GPS once we are at cruise altitude.

Wish they could afford to bring the Concord program back to life... I think that thing would be a hoot!

Having both the GPSr and the MP3 player going sure burns through the battery!

I wonder why Southwest keeps changing its policy? As of 6/16/09 (according to http://gpsinformation.net/airgps/airgps.htm ) it is OK to use them during non "Critical Flight Phases" (Try saying that 10 times as fast as you can!)

No thanks-

I can confirm that as of a couple of days ago SWA says you CAN use a GPSr on board (post-CFP that is...). At least that is what Lyric, the nice lady(?) from Southwest Customer Service, told me via e-mail.

Cheers,

Cool, thanks-

It is all about government control of our lives

Yepp, there's more than enough of that, all right.