Bliss. Pure bliss.
WOW. What a headset, this thing is a performer. It's so light and comfortable and cancels out so much noise. I can see this making a huge difference after a long day of flying where other headsets can increase fatigue because of the continous pressures and loud noises that we're exposed to throughout the flight.
Another fairly active day of flying tomorrow. Should be fun! Can't wait to put on the headset, flick the switch, and sit back and enjoy the bliss!
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Bose X Aviation Headset Review
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Hey Bonnie... err... Bontastic?? Alrighty... anyways, on to your question :)
Planes do fly very close together, more so as you get closer and closer to an airport, but even in enroute situations aircraft are seperated by certain distances at all times. Below 29,000 ft above sea level all aircraft flying the "highways in the skies" are seperated by at least 1000 ft vertically and usually 3-5 miles horizontally. At 29,000 ft and above aircraft are required to have extra equipment on board the aircraft to make sure they are flying extremely accurate at those altitudes. The seperation limits are similar, but the standards for the aircraft are higher. Generally it's 2,000 ft of vertical seperation however at those altitudes.
One of our jets goes as high as 51,000 ft! Now that's high! As a comparison Westjet and Air Canada don't fly any higher than 40,000 ft and typically between 30,000 - 36,000 ft most of the time.
At any rate, I'll get to your actual question Bonnie. The system you're referring to is TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoidance System). Essentially it's a device installed in the aircraft that runs in connection with other systems and can send information to other aircraft and can receive information about other aircraft within close proximination. What this allows the system to do is display an image on a screen in the cockpit showing all other traffic around the aircraft. It will alert you when you get too close to the aircraft and in certain aircraft it will even tell you how to avoid the other airplane (if the other airplane is equipped with the same technology). The system is smart enough to tell one plane to descend and the other to climb in the event of a possible collision so that they aren't both trying to avoid each other and make the situation worse.
Air Traffic Controllers obviously see everything as well and are generally able to make sure you'll never have to use such a system, but it helps people to see and avoid other aircraft most effectivley when within close proximity to airports where the skies can get very busy and congested.
Now in the States, yes to an extent this is a mandatory system for commercially operated aircraft that seat 10 passengers or more. Do we have this system, yes. On about 90% of our aircraft we've just installed this system and some other nice goodies as well. It won't be mandatory to have it installed until some time in 2007 but we're ready.
You're correct that Canada has not made this a mandatory requirement, and does not have legislation in place to make any changes yet.
You might ask yourself, why the heck wouldn't EVERY aircraft be required to have this system? One simple solution, it's VERY expensive. More expensive than many small aircraft! It is not feasible to outfit every aircraft in the sky with these systems. It is a great safety feature to have, but flying is very safe and many measures are already in place to make sure aircraft have the proper seperation.
Have no fear, when you're flying commercially with any large air carrier they all have these systems installed in their airplanes. But to require small air taxi operations, or sightseeing aircraft, or even all the joe shmoe's with their weekend flying trips to have this system installed is just not economical.
As a side note, I've heard about this tv program that was aired and the general agreement in the industry was that it was very skewed and didn't offer up all the facts. The media is always looking to sensationalize everything, so they'll go over the top to make the story sound better. Aviation in general gets a bad rap from the media... it really makes me furious some times to hear them go on and on about stuff they know nothing about, just feeding off the fact that they're looking for better ratings and ways to make their stories sound excellent.
Ok, enough for this comment, it's longer than many of my Blog entries!
If this is unclear to anyone or they have any further questions, please fire away!
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