from Hacker News

ACARS Drama

by jmwilson on 3/20/25, 2:33 PM with 103 comments

• by gnfargbl on 3/20/25, 3:30 PM

  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.

• by marcellus23 on 3/20/25, 3:39 PM

  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

• by jparishy on 3/20/25, 2:51 PM

  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.

• by MR4D on 3/20/25, 3:19 PM

  Did anyone else mistakenly read this as “LCARS” and expect something related to the Star Trek interface?

  Clearly I need more coffee.

• by jcims on 3/20/25, 4:14 PM

  Message: NO PROBLEM....DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DELTA PILOTS IT TAKES TO TAXI A PLANE AND NOT RUN INTO ANYTHING...

  https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114160399911092776

• by thot_experiment on 3/20/25, 3:34 PM

  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.

• by billyhoffman on 3/20/25, 5:20 PM

  !!!

  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

• by RicoElectrico on 3/20/25, 5:25 PM

  Related: Does anyone have the full message from Korean Air Flight 085 that contained letters HJK?

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_085

• by refulgentis on 3/20/25, 7:29 PM

  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.

• by wylie39 on 3/20/25, 3:59 PM

  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)

• by modin on 3/24/25, 11:44 AM

  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

  https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114189077174169462

• by zX41ZdbW on 3/20/25, 7:12 PM

  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=...

• by supernova87a on 3/21/25, 12:03 AM

  Is it true, I have heard, that ACARS messages are like as expensive as sending data to Hubble, and airlines hate how expensive it is (hence it is not a viable method of transmitting more volumes of more desired data, like position data, regularly etc.) but have no great alternative that they can develop to replace it?

• by buildbot on 3/20/25, 3:12 PM

  “HI. LAV A FLUSH HAS FAILED. NO SUCTION. CHEERS”

  Well, that would be awkward.

• by mmastrac on 3/20/25, 2:52 PM

  Oh Jesus:

  HOWDY, WERE GOING TO NEED LEO MEET THE AIRPLANE FOR A PERSON TOUCHING ANOTHER PAX.

• by MBCook on 3/20/25, 6:46 PM

  Most of the messages I get.

  By why show the ones with only an ETA and FOB? Is FOB code for something interesting?

• by weard_beard on 3/20/25, 3:59 PM

  <3 These are the jokes folks.

• by ape4 on 3/20/25, 3:30 PM

  Maybe someday ACARS will support lowercase