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ACARS Drama

218 points| jmwilson | 11 months ago |acarsdrama.com

103 comments

order

gnfargbl|11 months ago

Looks like you can "feed the drama" by sending unauthenticated JSON messages to an endpoint that the site specifies?

Fortunately, nobody on the internet has the urge to break things just for the hell of it, so I'm sure everything will be fine.

PatchworkCasino|11 months ago

From my experience the tailwatcher and (not) suprisingly related HAM communities are magical in their ability to just trust their community and rarely get burned.

Only 4 active connections allowed per site on a popular HAM webring? Never hogged by bots.

Site that allows minimally authenticated posting of aircraft ACARS messages? Never seen it hijacked for ads.

Physics-limited space for nearly untracable HF radio transmissions that can span half the US? Handfull of trolls that voluntarily relegate themselves to the 'troll freqs'.

It's no surprise the site allows unauthenticated JSON; in the rest of the hobby the FCC makes most types of security outright illegal.

sneak|11 months ago

For a long while I’ve had the plan to spam the hell out of the ingestion points for nonconsensual spyware/telemetry in open source projects, rendering the collected data useless. Been too busy to write the code the last few years.

kylemh|11 months ago

aaaand it's dead

marcellus23|11 months ago

Interesting that the keyboard for these[0] is not a QWERTY keyboard but instead has the buttons arranged alphabetically. That must be a pain in the ass to type in. Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? Do newer planes have QWERTY?

0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp

Unrelated, this one is cute: https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209

Suppafly|11 months ago

>Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard?

QWERTY predates electronic devices.

sdh9|11 months ago

You don't really need to type long form text on it. The primary use of the keyboard on the MCDU is for the flight management computer, and aviation fix names are 3 or 5 letters at most. That is the primary design case for the keyboard. ACARS is secondary, and on a typical flight only a few long-form text messages are sent.

Every aircraft that I've ever flown has an alphabetical keyboard. Typically horizontal space is valuable, yet vertical space is less valuable, so it's easy to make the keyboard long but not wide. However, as others pointed out, it seems to be changing in newer jets.

dhosek|11 months ago

I think it’s long past time to reorder the alphabet to follow QWERTY order. It will make keyboarding much easier for children. We just need to write a new alphabet song.

stronglikedan|11 months ago

> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.

Only until you're used to it. Then it's just as natural as switching between a keypad with a 1 in the top left versus one with a 7 in the top left. Your brain just takes the wheel.

lxgr|11 months ago

My guess would be: QWERTZ touch typing was not a common skill in most pilots at the time these were introduced, and an ABC layout is slightly more ergonomical than QWERTZ for users not familiar with either.

Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin older pilots' muscle memory.

sooperserieous|11 months ago

Oooohhh!!! Back in the day I had an "opportunity" to implement a virtual CDU interface, even re-created that font to do it. It talked to a real FMC (and later anything on the ARINC 629 bus). Good times :)

q3k|11 months ago

> That must be a pain in the ass to type in.

You get used to it, same as you got used to a QWERTY keyboard.

(note: this based on my experience often interacting with another device with an alphabetic keyboard, not an FMC)

joezydeco|11 months ago

Even if you did QWERTY, how would you arrange it in a 5x6 matrix?

the__alchemist|11 months ago

A lot of fighters have it even worse. Buttons around an MPD, or a T9-like system where number keys are overloaded for ~3 values each.

cccbbbaaa|11 months ago

I believe the A350 has it in qwerty.

closewith|11 months ago

QWERTY isn't universally used internationally, whereas the alphabet order is.

jparishy|11 months ago

Very cool. I love these feeds.

A very common flow for me when I see something weird on adsb or fr24 is to grab the ICAO address of the plane and search it on https://app.airframes.io/ to see if it was sending out any ACARS messages so I can... see what the drama was ha!

It's a really fun hobby if you find this stuff interesting. You can pick up an SDR online for like $30 USD and be able to do all this without Internet, above your own home.

MR4D|11 months ago

Did anyone else mistakenly read this as “LCARS” and expect something related to the Star Trek interface?

Clearly I need more coffee.

lproven|11 months ago

Yep, me too.

thot_experiment|11 months ago

I knew watching every mentour pilot and blancolirio video would serve me well. I haven't yet heroically landed a plane after the pilots both had heart attacks, but at least I can read most of these.

refulgentis|11 months ago

There's something a bit off about this:

- I know what ACARS, is and understood less of what's going on here after reading the "What is ACARS drama?"

- It's an uncomfortable mirror, a reminder that not everything has to become puerile entertainment. I wouldn't call anything I read in the messages "drama"

- The odd obsession over framing it as "drama" & humorous, to the point it is difficult to understand the "what is this?", and collaborators are invited to "Feed the drama"

- Open endpoint for anyone to contribute "drama", meaning, anyone can feed anything they want, into this very official-looking feed, without any sourcing / clarification / anything

I see how this can read quickly as negativity unfairly directed at creative spirit, the motive power behind man.

What tipped me over into "well, it's worth expressing the ick" is that a full 20% of the comments, 14/64, are communicating, speculating, then riffing on, a passenger being molested.

financetechbro|11 months ago

I think you are overthinking a fun little project with a memeish name. This stuff is just super fascinating and entertaining to aviation nerds. And using “drama” in the name is just typical hyperbole and almost like gen z / internet slang that you find online.

Comments riffing on the LEO request for PAX TOUCHING PAX is just typical forum stuff. Not something that I condone and somewhat unsavory, but it’s the internet and people riff on much more horrible stuff online. Doesn’t mean it’s okay but just not a specific flaw of this project, imo…

gosub100|11 months ago

I'm with you on this. I had to look up what ACARS is, but I've been following the ATC YouTube channels that try to make infotainment and I don't like it. I get that the public has an interest in what's going on, but I dislike that there are teams of people sitting around with monitoring software for the express purpose of finding mistakes and faults in people. It just seems wrong. And my guess is in the next few years, we will see pilots unions ask for encrypted channels because they will argue that stress of a national audience will affect their decision making.

wylie39|11 months ago

What's the legality of this? I was thinking of doing something similar but with POCSAG but from what I can tell it would be illegal because of ECPA(Electronic Communications Privacy Act)

tjohns|11 months ago

Explicitly legal. ECPA has an carve out for listening to aeronautical radio traffic:

18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(g)(ii)(I/IV):

"It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;... or by any marine or aeronautical communications system."

outworlder|11 months ago

It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted. Just like all non-military aircraft comms.

willyt|11 months ago

The ones recorded in the US probably are legal to listen to and the ones in the UK probably are not. I think I remember reading somewhere that it’s not legal to record ATC in the UK. IANAL SIUKRTCL

jcims|11 months ago

PT REPORTS CHEST PAIN RM318

supernova87a|11 months ago

Is it true, I have heard, that ACARS messages are like as expensive as sending data to Hubble, and airlines hate how expensive it is (hence it is not a viable method of transmitting more volumes of more desired data, like position data, regularly etc.) but have no great alternative that they can develop to replace it?

buildbot|11 months ago

“HI. LAV A FLUSH HAS FAILED. NO SUCTION. CHEERS”

Well, that would be awkward.

mmastrac|11 months ago

Oh Jesus:

HOWDY, WERE GOING TO NEED LEO MEET THE AIRPLANE FOR A PERSON TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX.

wulfstan|11 months ago

Yep someone's going to be getting a little chat with the cops for getting handsy. And at 7am for goodness sakes!

MBCook|11 months ago

Most of the messages I get.

By why show the ones with only an ETA and FOB? Is FOB code for something interesting?

isabanin|11 months ago

FOB is Fuel On Board. Nothing interesting.

weard_beard|11 months ago

<3 These are the jokes folks.

ape4|11 months ago

Maybe someday ACARS will support lowercase

sdh9|11 months ago

Why does it need to? What value does that add?

cmpaul|11 months ago

[deleted]

reportgunner|11 months ago

I'm a human so I can't provide an AI summary.

Check this summary out though I typed it out with my hands:

- airplane people use radio based on some standards from the 1970s to talk to ground people

- said airplanes fly over a guy's house so he can receive airplane people messages

- guy filters out human readable parts and has a bot that picks few of them that could be funny

- bot posts it online

joezydeco|11 months ago

It's a stream of data. Can you AI summarize the twitter firehose?

Leynos|11 months ago

[deleted]