Pilot-controller voice communication may be affected by many negative factors: radio interference (e.g. garbled transmission, background voice/noise/whistle, loud feedback), blocked transmission, weak or intermittent signal, etc.
‘Loss of communication’ (lost com) refers to situations in which the crew loses radio contact with ATC for some time for some reason. Communication failure can be partial (one way) or complete (two way). The most common factors leading to partial or complete communication breakdown are:
Radio equipment malfunction
Technical issues: stuck microphone (when a microphone or radio transmitter failed in the transmit mode), ‘sleeping receiver’ (when the radio goes dead so that no incoming calls are heard)
Human factor: equipment mishandling, setting the radio volume too low/off, tuning/assigning incorrect frequency, ATC forgetting to hand over aircraft, pilot forgetting to switch to a new frequency, etc. #lossofcommunication
