Discretely Listening to Commercial Aircraft Radio

wrote

My travels on commercial stuff is pretty limited but if I remember
correctly both Delta and United have ATC on channel 9 on the
entertainment selection. They will enable it about 10 minutes into the
flight and terminate it before landing... Hey.. we are pilots,, who
would not want to listen to it ??

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I always wondered why they did not let us listen to takeoff and landing ops.
That's the best part! g
--
Jim in NC

I always wondered why they did not let us listen to takeoff and landing ops.
That's the best part! g

I remember flying United into LAX late one night many years ago. I
was listening on channel 9 as we approached the airport at about 6,000
feet. Suddenly I hear ATC call our plane with something like:

"United 123, traffic your altitude one mile, descend _immediately_ to
four thousand !!"

I turned to my seatmate and said, "Hang on". A instant later, the
nose dove over and we all went weightless. Never had that happen in
a commercial liner (on purpose) before or since.

A half minute later, the captain comes on the PA system and casually
explains, "Ah, we're sure lucky tonight. Air traffic control just
gave us a quicker approach to the airport, so we'll get there sooner"

A cooler fib, I've never heard.

wrote in message
...
I always wondered why they did not let us listen to takeoff and landing
ops.
That's the best part! g

I remember flying United into LAX late one night many years ago. I
was listening on channel 9 as we approached the airport at about 6,000
feet. Suddenly I hear ATC call our plane with something like:

"United 123, traffic your altitude one mile, descend _immediately_ to
four thousand !!"

I turned to my seatmate and said, "Hang on". A instant later, the
nose dove over and we all went weightless. Never had that happen in
a commercial liner (on purpose) before or since.

A half minute later, the captain comes on the PA system and casually
explains, "Ah, we're sure lucky tonight. Air traffic control just
gave us a quicker approach to the airport, so we'll get there sooner"

A cooler fib, I've never heard.

Cool story. I would imagine that they tend to stop the in-cabin ATC channel
because of situations like that and the fact that the perpensity to screw up
increases during the take-off and landing phases.