ACARS Drama
109 comments
·March 20, 2025gnfargbl
PatchworkCasino
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.
tjohns
HF is definitely traceable.
Hams make an entire sport of of this ("fox hunting"), and the FCC has a network of automated monitoring stations dotted across the country specifically to determine the location of rogue radio transmissions.
That said, most of the time it's easier to just ignore the radio trolls.
jkingsman
Yeah, but like other things, as long as the trolls stay in their corner, people tend not to bother them because better in a contained spot than anywhere else. Learning 7200kHz (and 14.313) is 4chan radio and to steer clear is a radio rite of passage; I doubt most people would WANT to fox hunt them because then they're gonna leave and potentially settle somewhere more disruptive.
bigfatkitten
> FCC has a network of automated monitoring stations dotted across the country specifically to determine the location of rogue radio transmissions.
While they can do this if they choose to do so, nothing at the FCC's Enforcement Bureau has a lower priority than amateur radio and CB.
sneak
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
aaaand it's dead
marcellus23
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
>Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard?
QWERTY predates electronic devices.
marcellus23
True. Makes the decision even more baffling.
esoterae
Keyboards in aircraft instrumentation certainly do NOT predate electronic devices. Given that one-handed operation for instrumentation is almost always the primary mode of interaction, and instrument panels are really just face-plates on quite deep electronic device containers, the idea of a widescreen panel hole profile just to fit the input keys in a different format/aspect ratio does not make sense.
Some of the most interesting aviation research in the past few decades have been around human factors like psychology, perception, and cognition. If there was some substantial effect to having the buttons be arranged in a different pattern, I do legitimately hope it would have been found by now.
Do keep in mind these devices are cost-prohibitive in the extreme to design, build, and certify. The idea of having separate, parallel processes in order to have a different button layout between regional devices creates a thousand headaches of its own, both before and after production. The issue goes even further, in that just the FAA alone requires simulators of these aircraft to have replicated button look and feel criteria that would make your head spin. Is there even going to be a question as to if you're going to have to have two simulators? Will type-ratings be transferrable? Will there be separate differences training and/or currency requirements between the two distinct input methods?
Some or even most of those answers might turn out favorably for manufacturers or operators or pilots. But just having to ask them drives costs up considerably.
null
buildsjets
QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer overflow.
gschizas
That's mostly a myth.
I've seen a YouTube video in the last couple of years that explained the true origins of the QWERTY keyboard. Originally, the keyboard was alphabetical and arranged two rows, based on a piano keyboard, the black keys went A-N left to right, and the white keys went O-Z, right to left. Then it got shortened in width and the letters got folded over (this is why at the right edge of the middle row you have HJKL and the bottom row has MN reversed as NM).
I'm not 100% sure this was the video I saw, but it has some of the points: https://youtu.be/c8f6us-Sjlo
ForTheKidz
> QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer overflow.
This is sort of like saying a c compiler is there to stop you from dereferencing null pointers
null
esoterae
I always thought of it as more of a race condition.
sdh9
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
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.
netsharc
Different languages have different keyboards (e.g. QWERTZ or AZERTY). I wonder what problems would happen if we reordered the alphabet...
For one thing the ASCII ordering is now suddenly jumbled up. Maybe our great supreme intellectual leader Elon will issue Magacode to supersede Unicode, kym epcy epc ngy vky yxcohy!
codetrotter
Fun fact about character ordering:
Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated v and w as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled with a v or a w. The two letters were often combined in the collating sequence as if they were all v or all w, until 2006 when the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dictionary) declared a change.
lxgr
Sorting lists alphabetically would produce vastly different results by language, for one thing.
b59831
[dead]
stronglikedan
> 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.
bombcar
Many people don’t realize that a phone number pad and a keyboard one are opposite. They just use them.
Al-Khwarizmi
I've just realized, thanks to your messages, after years of using the without a second thought...
lxgr
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.
rounce
You’re likely not touch typing with two hands anyway because it’s often down on the centre console. Besides they’re primarily used for entering flight info into the FMS, not for long form messages.
sooperserieous
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
> 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)
sooperserieous
You do get used to it, but also the workflow is not entering words as much as it is things like waypoint codes, and a lot of numeric bits, which is why the number pad has its familiar layout.
joezydeco
Even if you did QWERTY, how would you arrange it in a 5x6 matrix?
marcellus23
I was imagining the panel could be designed such that you wouldn't need to fit it in a 5x6 matrix.
joezydeco
Avionics is the area that is the least tolerant of radical redesigns in human interfaces. This FMC form factor has been around a long time. There are newer ACARS/FMC systems that have an actual QWERTY keyboard.
https://www.aviationtoday.com/2016/04/27/spectralux-launches...
Remember, also, that not all countries use QWERTY. France, one of the homes of Airbus, uses AZERTY. What should they do about their keyboards?
jparishy
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.
jcims
(and if you set it up on a raspberry pi and run it full time you can get a free business plan subscription to flightradar24)
MR4D
Did anyone else mistakenly read this as “LCARS” and expect something related to the Star Trek interface?
Clearly I need more coffee.
lproven
Yep, me too.
_-_-__-_-_-
Exactly.
jcims
Message: NO PROBLEM....DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DELTA PILOTS IT TAKES TO TAXI A PLANE AND NOT RUN INTO ANYTHING...
thot_experiment
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.
billyhoffman
!!!
Message: DISPMORNING. NEED LEO TO MEET THE AC. A PAX WAS INAPPROPRIATELY TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX IN THE ROW INFRONT OF THEM. THE FAS HAVE THE SEAT NUMBER ANDMANIFEST. FYI AND THX
https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114195325338601167
[edit: Ahh, its a Frontier flight] https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/keyword/N387FR
RicoElectrico
Related: Does anyone have the full message from Korean Air Flight 085 that contained letters HJK?
refulgentis
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
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
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
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
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
It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted. Just like all non-military aircraft comms.
lxgr
> It's broadcast in the clear, unencrypted.
But so were analog mobile phones and pagers, and in some countries, even receiving unencrypted voice ATC radio isn't legal.
lazide
The whole point of ATC is that everyone in the area is able to figure out what is going on by listening in.
What/how is making listening in on that illegal ok?
willyt
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
PT REPORTS CHEST PAIN RM318
modin
Message: HELLO..WIFI DOES NOT SEEM TO BE WORKING. ANY PROCEDURES TO RESET. THX
Message: LOOKS LIKE WORKING NOW. WE TURNED OFF THEN ON FROM FLT DECK THX
Different industries, same procedures :-D
zX41ZdbW
Also interesting to see, is a map of all ADS-B emergency broadcasts, which can be: ['general', 'nordo', 'downed', 'lifeguard', 'reserved', 'unlawful', 'minfuel']: https://adsb.exposed/?zoom=5&lat=38.3590&lng=-97.5146&query=...
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.