Listening in on cockpit communications on a recent airline flight

I had occasion to go to southern California for a few days awhile back, flying on United. I have written before on this blog about some of my scenic flights thanks to some wonderful pilots at one of the local general aviation airports. I had a different sort of experience on this particular flight across the U.S. I had the opportunity to listen in on the cockpit crew communications with Air Traffic Control (ATC) as we flew across country.

On my flight, as is the case with many other flights I have taken, there are a number of audio channels available to the passengers to listen to during the flight through supplied headsets. Or you can, as I did, use your own ear phones. On certain United flights, one of these channels is devoted to cockpit communications. The caveat here is that it depends on available technology in the aircraft and the Captain has the option to not turn on the cockpit communication channel.

Before going any further, not every airline offers a cockpit communication channel for their passengers. I'm not exactly a frequent commercial airline flier. For all I know United is the airline that has this capability.

It is not my intention to write about the ins and outs of these communications between commercial airline cockpit crews and Air Traffic Control. Rather, the point that I want to make is that listening in on these communications was an excellent learning opportunity. So,I'll try to keep it simple, but I do want say that there were different types of controllers that the cockpit crew talked to. To that end, for purposes of this article only, I'll break out the sequence of controllers that the cockpit crew talked to as:

departing airport tower --> departure --> enroute --> approach --> arriving airport tower

I plugged in my earphones and listened to the cockpit communication channel for most of the flight. By the time the captain turned on the cockpit communication channel, they were no longer talking to the departing airport tower. I may have heard a couple of minutes of communications with departure controllers. For most of the 5 hours plus that I listened to cockpit communications, the cockpit crew was talking to a large number of different enroute controllers at different Centers as we flew across the U.S.

I heard communications between my cockpit crew and enroute controllers, but I also heard communications between other airliners and enroute controllers. I knew from local weather forecasts that there was line of thunderstorms to our west as we took off that afternoon. It was a long line of thunderstorms, so I was not surprised when one of the pilot's told the passengers that we had take a slightly longer route that day. We flew south before flying west.

Back to the cockpit communications, for the first hour or so of our flight, much of the communications that I heard was about this line of thunderstorms. Sometimes the controller would tell an airliner to make a diversion to avoid the thunderstorms. At other times a pilot would ask the controller for permission to divert from their assigned course in order to avoid a thunderstorm, in most cases the controller granted permission.

I could identify our flight because the airline and flight number is always the first thing you hear, whether it be from the crew or the controller. Having spent some time listening to similar communications using internet streaming available through websites such as live ATC, so it was easier for me to follow along. My time in ground school helped also as I was familiar with most of the terminology.

As I said, I had a great time listening to these communications and I learned a lot. I made a point to thank the co-pilot when I exited the jet at the end of the flight. Just so you know, my return flight was also on United and the cockpit communication channel was not available.

Next up: thunderstorm clouds aka cumulonimbus from the air