I've been threatening to write this article for a while now and it's as good a time as any. If you want to start an argument among pilots you only have to ask one little question: "Yeah, but what happens if you go NORDO?" If you read any aviation forums on the Internet, you know that question will generate at least a dozen responses.That's the reason I decided to finally write about the subject: All those responses the subject generates. Perhaps I have a twisted sense of humor but I find many of them funny. Of course, the only reason I can find any humor in them is because an aircraft going NORDO now is pretty rare. At least for any length of time it is. We have pilots get lost on the radio almost every day. But it usually only lasts for a few minutes. An aircraft losing communications for an entire flight is, thankfully, almost unheard of these days.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/features/say-again-50-lost-communications-nordo-part-1