It seems that the writes of recent television shows are just not doing their research before designing some sort of plot.  I just finished watching an episode of one of my favorite television shows, 24 (hours 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM).  I walked away severely disappointed at the lack of reality of the events in the show.

The basic premise is that a "terrorist" has control over the air traffic control system of the entire US (don’t ask, that is another problem completely).  Well this guy doesn’t get what he wants from the government and decides to redirect one aircraft into another and of course KABOOM!  Planes hit each other and a tragedy happens.

Anyway, back on planet earth, this isn’t possible.  I thought it was just common knowledge about the Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) that has been mandated on all passenger jets since 1993.  If we look a little further in to this article we can see where the writers really went wrong.

The Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System (or TCAS) is an aircraft collision avoidance system designed to reduce the incidence of mid-air collisions between aircraft. It monitors the airspace around an aircraft for other aircraft equipped with a corresponding active transponder, independent of air traffic control, and warns pilots of the presence of other transponder-equipped aircraft which may present a threat of mid-air collision (MAC).

. . .

TCAS II is the second and current generation of instrument warning TCAS, used in the majority of commercial aviation aircraft (see table below). It offers all the benefits of TCAS I, but will also offer the pilot direct, vocalized instructions to avoid danger, known as a "Resolution Advisory" (RA). The suggestive action may be "corrective", suggesting the pilot change vertical speed by announcing, "descend, descend", "climb, climb" or "Adjust Vertical Speed Adjust" (meaning reduce vertical speed). By contrast a "preventive" RA may be issued which simply warns the pilots not to deviate from their present vertical speed, announcing,"monitor vertical speed" or "maintain vertical speed". TCAS II systems coordinate their resolution advisories before issuing commands to the pilots, so that if one aircraft is instructed to descend, the other will typically be told to climb — maximising [sic] the separation between the two aircraft.

So, basically that paragraph is saying that this can’t even happen.  Not only do the aircraft communicate with each other and tell the pilots what to do, it does it without the knowledge of ATC.  Therefore this scenario could almost (I say almost, because there could possibly be a time when the corrective measures work) never happen.

Besides this, let’s not forget the whole idea that everything vital to our government is behind one massive firewall (err. . .what?) that is controlled solely by the NSA (makes little more sense).  Then there is the statement from another show where they want to do a "Reverse IP Lookup" (a what??) by building a GUI Interface (a Graphical User Interface Interface?  Hello Department of Redundancy Department!) using Visual Basic (errrm. . . we won’t every touch that with a ten foot pole).  We then have to ignore the fact that they get an IP address back with something like "312.523.643.12".  This is not even possible in the IPV4 range which can only go up to 255.255.255.255, but even that block is reserved for  broadcast.  Sigh. . .I guess I should give up.

So, I implore all those TV show writers (who will 99.999999999% chance never read this), use Wikipedia to do some research before you release your script to the world.