Air Traffic Communications in Routine and Emergency Contexts: A Case Study of Flight 1549

• In Event: 063 - Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Paper Session (one-hour). Ethnomethodological Studies of Work: Challenges, Practices, and Successes

Abstract

This paper is a conversation analytic investigation of the Radar Approach Control ("RAC")communications with U.S. Air Flight 1549 and other flights before, during, and after a critical emergency in which the plane (safely) landed in the Hudson River. In this paper I will explore how these interactions work to maintain routine air traffic flow and to accommodate emergencies when they occur by analyzing the audio recording and transcript of the communications immediately prior to, during, and after the Flight 1549 emergency landing. The transcript used in this paper covers a period of 20 minutes which includes the Flight 1549 emergency plus several minutes before and after the incident. In this paper I show how the speech exchange system of routine RAC talk can be modified by participants in order to handle emergency situations. The participants switch into a hybrid mode of communication which integrates aspects of ordinary conversation with the routine format for RAC exchanges. This mode of interaction facilitates communication between the RAC officer and the plane which is experiencing the emergency, while at the same time signaling to all other planes in the territory which utterances are emergency-related and which are routine utterances potentially directed at their plane.

Author

• Angela Cora Garcia, Bentley University