The above conversation is one every flight service station specialist deals with often — sometimes twice or more a day—thanks to cell phones and low areas of coverage.

Cell phones have made life easier in a hundred ways.  Instant communication whenever you want it allows much more flexibility, but the lack of clear signal creates its own frustrations.  Auto insurance companies and law enforcement officials report the increase of accidents due to cell phone use while driving.  Nonetheless, pilots will often use the cell phone on the way to the airports to “save time.”

There have been several times when I was talking to pilots on a relatively clear line and the pilot yelled “hold on,” then came back on the line after about 15 seconds to say, “Sorry, traffic got tight for a moment.”

Talk about a conundrum!  I spend my whole career working to maintain aviation safety – what if one of them dies in a car crash before he even gets to the airport because he is talking to me on a cell phone and has an accident!

Most of the people I work with have a love/hate relationship with cell phones.  We love having cell phones listed in the pilot data whenever an aircraft becomes overdue.  If you just forgot to cancel that flight plan and headed to a restaurant or hotel after landing – no problem – we can call the number, confirm your wellbeing, and immediately suspend search and rescue activity.

On the other hand, when pilots call us for flight plans or briefing and the conversation sounds like the one at the beginning of the article due to bad coverage or a noisy environment, that presents a challenge.

Crowded restaurants, the windy outdoors, and, yes, airports, all make hearing what you have to say very difficult.  We have a lot of pilots that actually get in the plane and turn the engine on to warm up before they call.  The pilots have noise cancelling headsets on – so they do not realize that the engine noise is preventing us from hearing them.

In these situations, the FS21 call tree can not always  discern what a pilot wants.  Before a call drops into my headset, the computer announces the state the pilot originally requested.  Sometimes the announcement says “any briefer.”  Pilots will frequently use this function when they want something that can be done anywhere such as filing a flight plan or asking general questions about Temporary Flight Restrictions.

The situation becomes worse when an instructor pilot is having a student call for a briefing using the speaker on his cell phone.  I will tell you that the feedback of the speaker phone makes hearing the request almost impossible. We don’t give up, though, because communication is our job, but you can see how the difficulty levels increase exponentially.

We realize that communication is a two way street.  We may ask a pilot to slow down when giving a flight plan, but we also realize that there are times when we are the ones who are talking too fast.  Please feel free to ask us to slow down or speak louder if needed.  The briefers automatically take it a little slower if they know that they are speaking to a student.

Our job is all about communication.  Please take a moment to assess the quality of your calling area before you call. It will make getting the right information from a flight service specialist a much easier experience.

Rose Marie Kern works at Lockheed Martin’s DCA AFSS.  If you’d like to ask Rose a question send her an email at author@rosemariekern.com.