Why are people so scared to declare? (SWA case)

Depending on what I’ve got going on, playing 20 questions with well-intentioned controllers may be counterproductive.

I had a bunch of electrical stuff take a poop (highly technical description for “entire emergency bus was accidentally wired to a 5 amp breaker”) on departure from a service center. Just telling departure that I’d lost a radio and needed to head back to the service center was way easier than explaining everything and declaring when all I needed from ATC was to get me turned around and sequenced back in.

I remember a group I volunteered with having an alternator go out in flight on a Cherokee. It was severe VMC and they were in the pattern. The pilot told tower he’d be a full stop and told him where they’d be parking in case the battery died before landing. That turned into tower declaring an emergency for him, fire trucks showing up, and the parents of the kids on board absolutely losing it. Completely unnecessary and avoidable. Yes, a lot of pilots are cautious about the E-word. On the flip side, “helpful” controllers who mean well frequently make things far more difficult than necessary.
 
NovemberEcho said:
Truth. If you’re an emergency things like airspace boundaries, speed limits, and several other rules disappear. If you tell me you need priority but not an emergency I’m not going to delay you but I’m not going to go crazy. If you’re an emergency and need to get down now I will send the 10 people ahead of you around, stop departures and put the center into a hold.
Click to expand...
I've used the "no speed limit" on a couple occasions during medical emergencies to get people on the ground more quickly. (one was a possible stroke, the other was a serious scalding incident on an FA covering a large area and the FA sounding shocky).

If you need it, use it. Not everything needs to go to 11, but if lives or long-term health are at stake, that's a situation we're there to manage.

I do really think there's a combination of factors, though. When I've had obvious emergencies, it's been easy to go "yep, we're declaring. Clear a path! I'm going home." But when it's less-obvious stuff, we know that you're going to move heaven and earth, and we don't really want to make the news. Because for every thread like this, we know there's going to be one where people are going to be ripping into somebody for declaring an emergency over something "stupid." We know that if our reasons aren't found to be valid after the fact, we may get looked at funny by our peers, or the company, or our passengers, or the media. And pilots, even airline pilots, are super mission-oriented, and we want to just keep the operation going.

But honestly, dealing with situations like that is part of the job. Build the team, gather information, work the problem, arrive at a decision, follow through, progressively evaluate.

If, at the end of the day, you were too conservative, so be it.
 
cmac88 said:
I've had plenty of situations now where I just declare for the pilot on our side.... Some of them actually seem upset by it. If it allows me or the controllers I'm with to just get you where your going as quickly as possible I will do it.
Click to expand...

While understandably necessary, for ATC to have to declare an emergency for a pilot/crew, is a failure on the part of that pilot/crew. Failure for them to do the “IC” part of their PIC job responsibilities. Worse, is when they get upset with ATC who is only trying to help them by having to do this part of the pilot/crew’s job for them.
 
MikeD said:
While understandably necessary, for ATC to have to declare an emergency for a pilot/crew, is a failure on the part of that pilot/crew. Failure for them to do the “IC” part of their PIC job responsibilities. Worse, is when they get upset with ATC who is only trying to help them by having to do this part of the pilot/crew’s job for them.
Click to expand...

I had a jet ask to return to Teterboro because the passenger forgot his wallet. Our genius supervisor decided that since it was a returnee he was going to have them roll the trucks anyway. Supervisors going to supervise. They most definitely do overreact sometimes.

Also sometimes we’ll declare an emergency because that’s what lets us break the rules. I’ve done it avoid weather before when someone decides last minute they changed their mind about flying through it and the only airspace that’s free belongs to someone else.
 
My radio work was of a different nature, and it ran a gamut. Command requested a resource and I'd move heaven and earth to get it for them, no matter how outlandish or unusual. A "Mayday," of course, trumped everything at the scene of a call whether PD, Fire or EMS.

There were a couple at work who tried to micromanage a scene and resources, but learned quickly "not on my watch' if I was the senior guy. There are enough objective examples in both emergency services and flying to suggest that erring on the side of caution is a far better thing to do than to wait too long.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top