The National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) has announced that from 1 July 2004 all air traffic control computer systems will be scrapped. Pilots will be expected to guide their aircraft into UK airspace and land their planes by text messaging the ground staff on their mobile phones.

The plans were unveiled by Managing Director of NATS, Roger Chapman at a press conference, in a specially reinforced concrete bunker at Heathrow airport, yesterday. He explained that, "since privatisation we obviously have to adjust to the commercial market, and since all our shares have now been bought up by Motorola it made perfect sense to synthesise their technology with ours".

Strong design work has been already been carried out. Helen Johnston, Chief Development Consultant at Motorola told us that a wide range of phone colours were planned - to synthesise nicely with the relevant aeroplane liveries - and the phone ringing tones will be given a "proud international flavour". Added functionalities are also planned. "Roger" and "Over" will be replaced by the hash key and new hot keys will transmit automatic messages such as "Where am I?, "Oh God I've run out of fuel, what do I do?" and "Look out, I'm coming in at 500mph - we're all going to die!"

Safety concerns have been addressed and pilots will be supplied with extra batteries to make sure that the phones don't run out of power at inconvenient moments such as "take-off" and "landing". Questioned whether the mobile phones themselves would interfere with aircraft systems, Mr Chapman said that there was no problem at all, because from now on every plane ticket would come with a "complimentary parachute". He also noted that this development would allow pilots to be recruited at a much earlier age because "teenagers are so much more conversant with SMS technology". Early trials with "pay-as-you-go phones" were not a success because in two cases co-pilots had to be despatched by glider to the newsagents to buy fresh vouchers.

3rd June 2004

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