Cell phones and missing airplane SAR

[JohnKachenmeister]

NSA= No Such Agency

[aveighter]

I am surprised this thread has developed along these lines for this length of time.

The use of cell phone signals as a tracking/locating tool is not new and has been in use around here for some time.  I always assumed the methodology was in common understanding through out our community.

It can be helpful but is not a slam-dunk however, especially when planes or people go down in relatively remote areas where towers are few and far between.

[lordmonar]

NSA= No Such Agency

I don't know what you are talking about.....just stay on the line until the nondescript white van pulls up.

[Matt]

NSA= No Such Agency

I don't know what you are talking about.....just stay on the line until the nondescript white van pulls up.

I mean...

[dbaran]

The larger carriers all have emergency operations centers, who handle situations like this.   They are set up to provide the information very quickly where "exigent circumstances" exist.  Basically, that means that there has to be someone's life at stake (pretty obvious in the case of a missing airplane).   They can pull the tower and antenna sector in 2 hours or less (i.e., wake up the engineer in the middle of the night and get him to do it) and get it to the appropriate person.

This is a very different (and much faster) from a traditional criminal law enforcement request, which requires a subpoena and usually runs 30-60 days before the LE agent gets the info he wanted.

They'll take calls from law enforcement agencies if the officer will say that it is a matter of life or limb - I'm sure that they'd snap to attention if AFRCC called them.  Especially since my friend who works in one is a CAP member.

[Kojack]

It's actually pretty simple.  If you know there is a cell phone, get the number and carrier.  Call them up and ask for their security section explaining who you are.  You MUST be the IC to do this.  They will not have every person in a search calling them up.  I ran a search in April that led to a find only because of the cell phone. 

While it took awhile, bear in mind that the data has to be refined and that it will put you in the area, not necessarily on  top of the person/crash.  It does help if the cell is GPS equipped, but that's not always going to be the case.

Within 30 minutes of getting the cell number, I knew the pilot had NOT followed his stated plan and was down many miles from where we were originating the search.

Had it not been for that cell phone, we never would have found the site.

[mawr]

I used this kind of information during a missing aircraft search in October.  Alabama HLS was intrumental in getting the information that time but in the past, all you needed is a Judge to sign off on the request.  We happen to have one who is the DCC of a local squadron and it only takes about 30 min. to get her to sign off when we need it.

[RiverAux]

Okay, now you see what I'm talking about.... Apparently we have one IC who only needed to call the company but another one who was instructed that they needed to have a judge sign off on the request while another person says to call AFRCC and let them figure it out. 

Seems to me that I am right in saying there isn't any consistent CAP policy on how to approach this subject? 

Rather than have each individual IC or Wing try to figure out the labyrinth of rules and laws around this issue for themselves, national should do it and come out with explicit directions on how they want us to handle it.  And if there are some states that require different procedures because of their own state laws, that can easily be put together in a nice table giving state-by-state directions. 

[arajca]

Don't forget the differences between the cell phone company policies.

[RiverAux]

Exactly.  And keeping up with the right person to contact for the information from the cell company 24/7....

[Major Lord]

PLEASE, sweet mother of Buddha don't tell the family that we can track their loved ones' cellular phone! WE can't. Various carriers can develop good intel and occasionally, on GPS equipped phones do much better than that, but I would not count on it.

Radio direction finding of phones is tough, given the wide array of services and spectrums. If a phone is in a cell site ( and has not burned to a crisp or lost battery power) it can be "pinged" either by the phone company, or by trying to call it. The resultant "reply" can be RDF'd with the right gear in the right conditions, but don't bet on it.

[mawr]

We don't track the phones but the cell phones do ping the cell tower's when within distance.  This often has given us a last known location to start our search.   

I recently worked a missing aircraft mission where we knew that the pilot's cell phone had pinged a certain cell tower (which was along his believed flight path) but didn't ping the next tower.  This info gave us an indication of the pilots' progress along his believed flight path.

Often the Cell Phone company can tell you which panel on thier tower that the signal came from giving you additional intel (north, south, etc) 

[capcadet101]

I sure hope somebody from NHQ is reading this and can get out a quick information sheet on how CAP ICs could access this information during a search. 

And how would work, exactly?

It would work the same way that it does when cops are trying to track someone they call the service and have them track the number if they get it that is.  They would have to know what the cell phone number is to be able to do that.

[brasda91]

If the cell phone was on, and it was the right sort of cell phone, when the plane crashed and the phone survived, it may still transmit a signal that the cell phone company could pick up and CAP could use that to narrow down the search area. 

Sometimes that will depend on the cell provider, phone and user.  I have Alltel and have had a phone that would transmit the gps location constantly or only when on a call.  Some people may not all the in's and out's of their phone and not know how to turn on the constant gps function.  The phone I'm currently using doesn't have this function.