Within minutes of the crash at Plaridel, online news services filled their bandwith with asinine reporting.
The Manila Bulletin reported that there were no air traffic controllers at Plaridel.
The Plaridel Airport operate [sic] without the aid of air traffic controllers who direct the flow of aircraft traffic in the area.
“Pilots, trainers and instructors who use the runway are on their own, using visual means to see one another, to identify landmarks or sometimes, they talk on two-way radio to indicate their positions relative to one another,” [a source] said.
Makes you wonder who the heck we talk to on 122.40 megacycles, when we transit Plaridel’s airspace. According to the Airman’s Information Publication, that is the frequency of Plaridel tower. That information is published by the ATO itself — who should know best. Right?
July 7, 2007 — The Plaridel control tower is at upper left
The Associated Press went so far as to report that there was no control tower at the airport. APNews even posted “live video” on the internet that included a shot of a body in the morgue. Shame on them. I won’t even post that link here.
Another report about the Plaridel mid-air collision came from GMA 7, a major TV broadcast network in the country.
[The source] admitted they are still facing a blank wall as of now, as they could not retrieve the flight recorder, or black box, of either plane.
Good heavens! A flight data recorder in a Cessna 150?
The cost of a flight data recorder, commonly known as the “black box”, would be close to the current value of the Cessna 150 itself.
Black boxes are mandatory only on civil airliners. They record the last minutes of an airliner’s flight parameters — speed, heading, attitude, control movements, etc. — and the last hour of cockpit voices, ambient noise.
Cool story there, GMA 7. If they are waiting for the black boxes from the Cessna 150s, they will be facing a blank wall for a long, long, long time.
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A shallow brook babbles the loudest…-RPUX ATC
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