Interesting article from a Boston Globe reporter about listening to ATC when flying United. He mentions LiveATC.net at the end...
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/11/22/in_flight_entertainment_for_nerds/In-flight entertainment for nerds
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | November 22, 2005
You hear that tiresome cliche at the end of every airplane flight. The plane rolls up to the terminal and a pilot or flight attendant says, ''We know you have choice of carriers when you fly, so thank you for choosing _____."
Often one does have a choice of carriers, and when I fly, I always choose United. Why? No, not because of their silly ads; they just interrupt football games. But because on its in-flight entertainment system, United lets passengers listen in to the air traffic control (ATC) chatter from takeoff to landing.
For pilots, it's pretty dull stuff, and they would prefer to keep it that way. But I've listened in during three cross-country flights, and I find the palaver fascinating. I would be the first to admit that it's an acquired, maybe a contrapuntal, taste. I am, after all, the guy who finds Leonard Cohen's songs to be cheerful and upbeat.
My love affair with United's Channel 9 began in August 2004, as our jet banked northeasterly out of San Francisco airport heading back to Boston. It was a gorgeous day, and as we wheeled over the East Bay, I heard the SFO controllers handing us over to Oakland Center, which was already about 8,000 or 9,000 feet below us. I wasn't taking notes at the time, but SFO's final transmission was something like, ''United 178, contact Oakland Center on [frequency] 125.2, good day!" My, they are so polite! was my first thought, and my second thought was: Well, that's nice. Someone is waiting to escort us all the way back to Boston.
I made a quick round trip to San Francisco about 10 days ago, and this time I did take notes. I especially love the westbound Boston departure -- any Boston departure, actually -- because it lands us in the hands of Boston Center, which is located in Nashua, N.H., just off Route 3. My family would pay millions if I could once drive past that low-slung, gray building bristling with microwave antennae and not say: ''There's Boston Center! Isn't that incredible! They control the airspace from Campobello Island all the way to New York!"
When you're flying westward, Boston Center generally hands you over to Cleveland, although I've heard some transmissions involving Montreal and Toronto. The vast tracts of airspace are divvied up like our gerrymandered western suburbs; you'll see a sign saying you've left South Natick, and then there's another sign indicating you've somehow returned to South Natick. By the time we leave Boston Center, however, I am listening for only one thing: reports of turbulence over the Great Lakes. It's always bumpy there. Maybe if I had ever taken a science course in high school I would understand why.
If you've ever listened in to air traffic talk, you have heard pilots discussing ''light chop": ''a little light chop at 32," meaning at 32,000 feet; ''occasional light chop next 50 miles or so." It never feels light to me, but frankly they couldn't care less. Pilots will ask the ground controllers about ''smoother" air at different altitudes, but they almost always make these changes for the comfort of the passengers, not because they are worried about the safety of the aircraft.
Arriving in San Francisco was beautiful. Oakland handed us over to Bay Approach, which routed us over Modesto, the gateway to Yosemite National Park. Turning northward and descending, we flew over San Jose and up the length of San Francisco Bay. By this time, the pilot was talking to the San Francisco tower and was flying to the airport by sight, not on instruments. ''I see the bridge [the Bay Bridge] and the airport ahead," he said, and was cleared to land.
The tower politely inquired if he saw a small Embraer Brasilia plane ahead of us at 2 o'clock, and eventually he did. We see this kind of parallel landing directly over our heads on Morrissey Boulevard, on what I call the ''Globe approach" to Logan. Although the planes seem to be flying very close together, they are landing on different runways, 04 Left and 04 Right.
Since returning from the West Coast, I've learned about the website liveatc.net, which lets you to listen to live ATC transmissions from almost anywhere in the world. I spent a portion of Monday listening to Dublin, Geneva, Amsterdam, and, of course, more Boston chatter. There was ''moderate chop" over Logan on Monday morning; yikes!
Now I have the best of both worlds: I can listen to ATC and I don't have to fly. The friendly skies are right here on the computer in front of me.