ADS-B on commercial flights

[Palmpilot]

I created a flight plan with a 172 I had already configured in GP. GP must have maximum decent rates based on aircraft or something b/c on the approach GP would give me the "terrain alert! pull up! pull up!" alarm even though we were 6K AGL. Needless to say, some nearby passengers looked my way. Good thing I can quickly mute my phone!

Did you say anything to the pax who looked at you, to reassure them that you weren't all about to die?

 

[kayoh190]

I'm sure the discrepancy was GPS altitude as previously mentioned.

Yeah that was likely the case, especially if you're just talking a few hundred feet. But remember that at airports with long finals there are a lot of times where ATC not only has you join the localizer a long ways out, but also has you a lot lower than the crossing altitudes for that distance. I'm no stranger to CLT (if you were unfortunate enough to be in the back of a 737, it might have even been me!), so using your 18C example: ATC might have us joining the localizer damn near JEDKO at 4000 (or even 3000) feet. So just because you see the plane crossing FERSA at 4000' doesn't mean the pilots are dicking it up.

That said - speaking for myself - I'm always happy to talk shop and answer questions for anyone that's curious. There's a big difference between making a snarky comment as you step off the airplane (not saying that's what you'd do - it's just the kind of thing we deal with that generates the defensiveness) and pulling us aside to ask us something about the flight. Many of us are still airplane nerds and love to shoot the bull, so assuming I have the time, ask away!

 

[Palmpilot]

Reminds me of the time when I was a passenger on a Reno Air flight, and coming into San Jose, CA (SJC), it looked like they flew a short approach. So on the way out, I asked the pilot if that was what it was, and he said "Yep. We saw the opportunity and we took it." That's the only time I know of when I was on a airliner that did one. (I thought it was cool.)

 

[asicer]

it looked like they flew a short approach. So on the way out, I asked the pilot if that was what it was, and he said "Yep

As in a power-off 180? I wonder what the other passengers were thinking.

 

[Palmpilot]

As in a power-off 180? I wonder what the other passengers were thinking.

I don't know whether it was power off or not. I doubt the other passengers noticed it, but I thought it was fun!

 

[red4golf]

I've used ForeFlight to watch our airline flight progress. Kinda cool, but once it _definitely_ freaked out the little old lady seated near me. She was about to report me as some sort of terrorist with some sort of strange device "Can you control the plane with that?"
In the interest of simplicity, I told her "it's just a video game" and turned it off.
Legally no problem, but there's the potential of annoying explaining.

I did that once and discovered that the young lady next to me was a student pilot. Not only that, she had been at the same Mexican resort as I had and knew my kids names. We were also from the same town.... My wife was seated in the row ahead of us and reenacted a particular scene from Exorcist, minus the green pea soup.

 

[Jeff767]

CRJ is the same. As long as the FMS is also not inop, you can still navigate normally. When we had the FMS database outage/glitch a few years ago, that was fun getting routed VOR to VOR and not being to accept direct…

Every FMS is the same. They use GPS if available, if not they drop to DME/DME nav. If that is unavailable the use IRU or INS Nav. It happens automatically. There is no pilot action required. We would often lose GPS flying in the Middle East as it’s often jammed. We would note the GPS unavailable message and yawn.

 

[cowman]

I haven't flown commercial in quite a few years but last time I did take an iPad with foreflight along. My GPS didn't work so I had fun looking out the window and matching up landmarks with the sectional. A couple people were curious, had a good conversation with one guy. Didn't have any issues.

There are so many different electronic devices in use these days I don't think anyone is going to notice and if they do they'll probably just be curious.