How many pilots actually understand the difference between the CTAF and UNICOM?

It is alarming to me that most general aviation pilots do not understand the difference. The first example that comes to mind is after hurricane Katrina hit in New Orleans. Lakefront Airport was in chaos with both military and civilian aircraft delivering supplies and airlifting residents out of the city. With no control tower in service, pilots began questioning themselves on which frequency to use. They believed that since the part-time tower, which uses a frequency of 119.90 during operational hours was closed that the UNICOM of 122.95 became the default frequency. This is a vulgar mistake, since the CTAF that is used for the non-controlled hours; 2200-0800L is also 119.90. This left a high percentage of pilots on a different frequency, meaning they might as well not have had a radio. Miraculously, no incursions took place although I’ve heard about the many close calls.

• CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) should be readily known to pilots because it is what is used to communicate at non-towered and part-time towered airports during specified hours and during after hours when intentions are to be broadcasted to other aircraft and airport workers on the ground.
• UNICOM (Universal Communications) is a non-government air to ground radio frequency which may be monitored by FBOs or airport personnel and may provide airport information such as weather, preferred runway, fuel service, taxi-cab requests, etc. for public use airports where there is no control facility or Flight Service Station.

It is also equally important for airport tenants, such as FBO employees who will be towing aircraft in movement areas to know which frequency to transmit their intentions on so arriving and departing aircraft will be aware of an occupied taxiway or runway. This is something that is frequently left out of their employee training curriculums. It will take months of on the job training (OJT) for someone to start understand the airport layout and how to communicate with ATC (Air Traffic Control).

Just remember to always inform ATC of the following:

1. Who you are.
2. Where you are.
3. Where you want to go.

This past weekend at an airport I will not disclose, an FBO employee who was unfamiliar with the airfield began towing an aircraft across an active runway with an aircraft on final approach. Luckily, the control tower was open and was able to send Airport Operations to the area to remove the person. If this same situation were to occur at night with the control tower being closed, this may have turned into a runway incursion. The employee stated that he thought the tower was closed and was broadcasting on UNICOM instead of the CTAF.