October 29, 2007

Results of Contingent Surveys on ANA Aircraft Station, Etc.

Investigation into the cause of aeronautical radio communications trouble on October 17
On October 17, 2007, at Nagasaki Airport, radio equipment at an All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. (ANA) aircraft station failed and temporarily disabled communications. In order to verify the cause of the failure, MIC conducted contingent surveys on the ANA aircraft station and the NTT DoCoMo Kyushu Inc. land mobile station (mobile phone) pursuant to the Radio Law.
The surveys revealed that the radio equipment of the aircraft station had a defect, while the mobile phone did not. MIC thus instructed ANA to conduct meticulous maintenance of its radio equipment.

1. Background
ANA reported the following details to MIC. At a little past 9 a.m. on October 17, 2007, aeronautical radio telephony communications of ANA flight 662 (Boeing 767-300) bound for Haneda was disabled when the aircraft was running on the taxiway at Nagasaki Airport, but returned to normal when a passenger turned off his mobile phone. They further reported that the cause of the trouble remained unidentified. MIC thus conducted contingent surveys: on October 23, on the mobile phone suspected to have caused the outage; and on October 25 and 26, on the aircraft station that suffered the communications outage.

2. Outline of the inspection results
(1) Mobile phone
The mobile phone that the passenger was using had no defect, and it did not emit radio waves that would affect aeronautical radiotelephony communications.
(2) Aircraft station
It was confirmed that the cord sheathing of the hand microphone on the aeronautical radiotelephony equipment that failed was damaged, which caused the communications outage.

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International Policy Division,
International Affairs Department
Telecommunications Bureau, MIC
TEL: +81 3 5253 5920 / FAX: +81 3 5253 5924