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Communication breakdown Darrell Greer Northern News Services Published Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Problems with a Telesat Canada Anik F2 satellite caused the loss of Internet, e-mail, long-distance phone services and bank ATM services this past Thursday, Oct. 6. While Iqaluit reported radar loss at its airport, causing all flights to be cancelled, director of Nunavut Airports Shawn Maley said the big problem the data loss caused observer-communicators at Nunavut's smaller airports was the loss of their ability to report weather conditions. He said the observer-communicators report weather conditions on an hourly basis, and that information is used to generate a general area forecast. "You're talking about important information as to what's happening on the ground, such as ceilings, precipitation, visibility and things of that nature," said Maley. "That all goes into a system in North Bay, Ont., which generates terminal area forecasts for each airport to allow airlines to decide where they're going and alternate landing sites. "The airlines couldn't launch without that information, which is why all flights were cancelled to Nunavut's smaller communities. "A couple of flights made it to Rankin (Inlet), which was still reporting weather, but that was it." Maley said flight-services stations run directly by Nav Canada have satellite phones, but local stations don't. That's something he wants to see change. "We operate the radio stations on Nav Canada's behalf on a third-party contract, but it's still their jurisdiction. "I have it on the agenda to discuss, because I'd like to see the same system in place at smaller airports that they have at the flight-services stations. "When something like this happens, they pull out a local station procedure book, and there's satellite (communications) failure at tab four. "The operator opens it up, sees the directions and uses a satellite phone through a hard-wired antenna to report the weather, and that's what we need at all our stations." Maley said pilots can access weather information either by using the Internet or, failing that, calling North Bay by satellite phone. He said if every plane and observer-communicator has a satellite phone, this becomes almost a non-issue. "Our observer-communicators are still using fax machines to report weather from our smaller communities. "So if everyone had a satellite phone set up to send and receive calls during a communications failure, you could plug in your phone and do the weather the same as if you were using a fax machine. "Then, everybody's good, at least from the weather perspective."
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