Critical Communications

[flyingcheesehead]

I've always thought the two were somewhat interchangeable except that one must consider the audience. If you are broadcasting in the blind a "Mayday" call seems appropriate for anything that would precipitate any emergency transmission. OTOH if your emergency isn't at the panic level yet and you are already in communication with ATC EG on tower or approach frequency of the airport you are departing from or arriving to, with center on an IFR flight or for flight following etc. then "N4321 is declaring an emergency" followed by any requests you have for assistance would be my choice.

Ah, but that assumes the controller is actually listening to you. Here's why an emergency declaration should have three Maydays in front of it:

This is how it's done, guys:

"Mayday, mayday, mayday, Atlanta Center, N12345 has lost our engine and we need vectors to the nearest airport."

I will guarantee you, even if I've got my cord stretched out to the other side of the control room, talking to my buddy about his retirement party, I'll be back if front of the scope before you're done with that third "mayday." Even if I'm talking to CLT Approach on the land-line, trying to coordinate the arrival of Air Force One, I will hang up before you're done and you will have my complete attention.

That's what it's designed to do: get attention. It even says so in the book. (AIM)

If I want that controller's attention, I'm gonna put Maydays in front of it. They're often on the phone or monitoring several frequencies. The Maydays are the only way to be sure you're gonna get your message through the first time.

The rest of the article is here.

 

[RogerT]

Never heard of "security"

not sure if i would ever really use "pan-pan" for that matter either. i either need help like RIGHT now or I don't. I'm not afraid to declare an emergency if need be and I'm also not going to try to use lower grades of attention getters to try to avoid paperwork..Which IME did not exist.

I've never heard of "Security" in all these years. I have only had a situation
one time potentially requiring attention. About 2 or 3 minutes after takeoff
as I leveled out I started getting a bunch of smoke in the cockpit. I made
the call "Pan Pan Pan ... Tower, I have smoke in the cockpit and am
returning to the airport". They cleared me to land any runway, asked if
I wanted the fire trucks. I said not yet .. I'd land on the runway in front
of the fire station just in case and they would lose radio contact because
I was shutting off electrical to diagnose the situation for a minute, then
I'd get back to them.

The plane wasn't on fire, everything was working, it flew fine, there was
just the potential for needing more assistance, but I needed to work thru
the situation. In my opinion, that is a Pan Pan Pan situation.

RT

 

[gismo]

Ah, but that assumes the controller is actually listening to you. Here's why an emergency declaration should have three Maydays in front of it:



If I want that controller's attention, I'm gonna put Maydays in front of it. They're often on the phone or monitoring several frequencies. The Maydays are the only way to be sure you're gonna get your message through the first time.

Good point. I was picturing the emergency coming up at a point when I was already talking to ATC. If wasn't talking/listening to someone at that moment, the Maydays would be a good attention getter. A lot would depend on how urgent the situation was and how important it was that you get ATC's help right away.

 

[write-stuff]

As an aside, I heard a student about a year ago in the pattern. He was obviously having problems - nothing major but they sure seemed major to him. Finally, to top it off, he lost his flaps in his 172 (motor, switch, whatever). Completely freaked him out and he started calling out Mayday to the tower controller. The controller was calm about it and the student regained his composure and landed normally.

 

[jesse]

As an aside, I heard a student about a year ago in the pattern. He was obviously having problems - nothing major but they sure seemed major to him. Finally, to top it off, he lost his flaps in his 172 (motor, switch, whatever). Completely freaked him out and he started calling out Mayday to the tower controller. The controller was calm about it and the student regained his composure and landed normally.

When I was a student on a XC the flap switch failed and I had to fly all the way back with 45 degrees of flaps out..It took some time.

 

[write-stuff]

Yeah, Jesse. Losing flap control in the down position is probably a bit more troublesome than losing them in the retracted position. But obviously, not an emergency in either case. I'm sure you had a slow flight home!

 

[ScottM]

In the CG, at my air station, "Security" was used for maritime ops and communications, never when working aircraft emergencies. The only time I ever uttered the words when I was in an airplane was when I was working a hoist over a bunch of small boats - since the H-3 generates about 80+ MPH downdrafts, it was proper for me to warn the boats in the vicinity of our rescue op about the hazard we were about to introduce, over the marine radio, not the aviation one.

"See-Lonce" (silence) was used the same way, on the marine bands, never on the aviation bands.

By the way, I'm not sure that aviators are expected to respond to aircraft mayday calls the way a boat does (make for the aircraft in distress, etc), unless they are asked to assist by ATC.

Still used in Coast Guard Air ops when working on the marine band radio. But not on the airbands.

 

[ScottM]

Declaring an emergency just says you're in a situation which will require priority over other operations, e.g., losing one engine in a twin but still being able to maintain altitude. "MAYDAY" is generally accepted to mean you're in imminent danger to life and limb, e.g., you're on fire. Thus, you can declare an emergency in situations which don't merit a MAYDAY call, but any situation meriting a MAYDAY call is an emergency.

Precisely.

The one time I was in a situation where we had to use this it was on a boat but basically the same type of scenario that Ron describes. We started taking on water. We called the CG with a PAN-PAN call to let them know we had an emergant condition. This alerted them to a situation and they started to responded.

We broke anchor and were heading back to shore when the engine died.

Two very quick attempts at restart and then we radioed 'MAYDAY-MAYDAY-MAYDAY" gave a quick position report and promptly sank.

50F water, and almost 45 minutes later a rescue boat arrived and the last out of the water was almost another 40 minutes later. I was third from the last with hypothermia and could no longer use my hands. Had we not declared the emergancy it could have been much worse.