Air Canada Flight Ac1174 Mayday

[IFG]

Entirely agree with both inchman & J.O.

I'd wondered if there was a company training element there. FWIW, I can honestly say that I've never used Mayday and Pan calls, never before heard them used on freq (altho' I do know of some instances abroad), not in Sim either. That encompasses 30+ years at three different carriers, in Canada and Europe, and a stint instructing at Flight Safety. But for all that, in comparison to "declaring an emergency" (which I have used, and heard used by AC crews BTW) I think it's a good thing (which I'd commented on favourably above), only caveat being a means of calibrating the "emergency", which the alternative PAN call fulfills.

Cheers, IFG

[J.O.]

FWIW, I get to observe numerous crews in the flight simulator when monitoring ACPs, and I am happy to say that the use of MAYDAY and PAN is much more widespread than it was even 10 years ago. I see instructors and ACPs encouraging their use when they should have been and I've seen good discussions (in general) about the appropriateness of both.

I have a friend who experienced an engine failure in France (in cruise at around 35,000 ft). His initial call to ATC was that he was "declaring an emergency" and needed a descent clearance. The initial response was "stand by". They never did use Mayday or PAN and dealing with ATC until they landed at CDG was less than ideal. They were even given an exceptionally long final approach behind a "local" B747. I'm convinced they'd have received much better handling if they had used MAYDAY or PAN.

Now if we could only get the folks who live below the 49th parallel to buy in to this concept ...

[acsidestick]

The problem with "declaring an emergency" and thus the reason it has been beaten out of us is that many airspace s in the world that are ESL and that phrase not only means nothing to them, but may lead to making your situation worse. In China, for instance, saying that might simply lead to the reply if "Rojjjaaa guuudbyyyyy". Depending on their level of language training, they may not have any conversational ability, only direct, or rehearsed technical language flow charting. Therefore, the only words that are spring loaded to cause action are Mayday and Pan, but as Dave has stated above, calling pan may only get you a"so what"level of attention.

[Say Again, Over!]

inchman,

From our perspective, as ATC, "Mayday" or "Pan-Pan" is irrelevant in the context of what happens on the infrastructure side. If you have an engine on fire and you tell me you need to come back immediately, whatever words you use, everyone is on alert. For example, I'm pretty sure Sully never called either a Mayday or a PAN before landing in the Hudson but the effect on us and everyone else involved was the same.

Where the terms are usefull to us, as controllers, is either to get our attention and/or indicate severity. Normally, if you first indicate you have a problem and leave it at that, I'll try to get someone to help just in case and wait for you to call me back. If you send out a Mayday, I'm grabing the first warm body that walks by and alerting evryone to wait for the forthcoming info; I'm starting to think about restricting trafic and I might try to coax a tiny bit more info from you so I can start making a plan. Trucks will be rolling from that point on. This being said, however, if you were to clamly tell me that something just fell off, the same sort of thing would happen. So we're sort of discussing semantics a bit.

As well, we will sometimes call the trucks out even if you have neither used one of the keywords or requested them. Sometimes, we like to plan for the unexpected and it also lets everybody practice, which is a good thing in itself.

So if you yell out Mayday, you have my full attention and my heart rate up. If you tell me the problem and communicate what you need to me, same thing is achieved. There are pros to using the keywords but, IMHO, they are often not required.

Thoughts?

Felix

[Johnny]

"Mayday" became the training standard after one of our 67's rejected in Beijing. They notified tower of the "reject," after a moment of confused silence tower gave Take-off clearance to the next Aircraft.

I also remember one of our 737's going into Halifax in the late 80's. Used the "we are declaring an Emergency" phase and was told he was number four to land.

I side completely with the training department, far better to declare the "Mayday" and worry about the paper work later.

[inchman]

Thanks for the explanation, Felix. Makes perfect sense.

As for all of the other innuendo that the Chinese don't understand anything but MAYDAY, I'm pretty sure if they taught them MAYDAY , they probably taught them PANPAN. A PANPAN on a reject should get the tower's attention just as easily as a MAYDAY, but won't necessarily result in the aircraft being surrounded by fire trucks.

The ICAO definitions are as follows:

A distress call (situation where the aircraft requires immediate assistance) is prefixed MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY.

An urgency message (situation NOT requiring immediate assistance) is prefixed PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN, PAN-PAN.

So, therein lies the difference.. the immediacy of the situation. I'm actually embarrassed that I didn't know the nuance. I always thought it was the gravity of the situation.

If you need to head for the button of the runway right now, and/or you're on fire, or you need to break off the approach immediately or you're going to crash short of the runway MAYDAY is more apropos. I would also throw in a situation that will almost definitely end in a crash or loss of life, even if it is not imminent.

If you are 15 miles final and you get a chirp when you try to extend slats and you just need a vector or hold in the next couple of minutes to work the checklists, PANPAN is probably more correct. If your embedded on final and there is aircraft all around you and you need to get out of there now, MAYDAY is the call.

As an addendum, something I came across that is not clear to everyone is:

’Fuel Emergency’ or ‘fuel priority’ are not recognised terms. Flight crews

short of fuel must declare a PAN or MAYDAY to be sure of being given the

appropriate priority.

There was a time when Fuel Emergency was recognized in the US, as I recall.

[Fido]

If MAYDAY gets used to much the authorities might have to come out with a new higher level.

How about OMG OMG. The new kids on the block would understand that.

[J.O.]

If MAYDAY gets used to much the authorities might have to come out with a new higher level.

How about OMG OMG. The new kids on the block would understand that.

Makes perfect sense as more and more communications are done using those "text messages" they were advertising with CPDLC.

[mo32a]

If you just explain your problem to the controller the first words out of their mouths is usually "Are you declaring an emergency?"

If you need priority you are better off declaring the emergency up front.

[inchman]

Errata:

For "definitions" in a post of mine, above, I thought I had been reading an official document. It would appear that it was an interpretive document.

From the Canadian AIM, the following are the definitions:

4.1 Declaring an Emergency

An emergency condition is classified in accordance with the degree of danger or hazard being experienced, as follows:

Distress: A condition of being threatened by serious and/or imminent danger and requiring immediate assistance.

Urgency: A condition concerning the safety of an aircraft or other vehicle, or of some person on board or within sight, which does not require immediate assistance.

from the FAA pilot/controller glossary, even though they refer to ICAO definitions, they define the conditions as follows:

MAYDAY- The international radiotelephony distress signal. When repeated three times, it indicates imminent and grave danger and that immediate assistance is requested.

PAN-PAN- The international radio-telephony urgency signal. When repeated three times, indicates uncertainty or alert followed by the nature of the urgency.

In another part of the publication they describe the use of the word MAYDAY "preferably repeated 3 times" (but above it says it only kicks in when you say it 3 times) and also refer to an "informal" process whereby the pilot simply contacts ATC "stating the nature of the difficulty, pilot's intentions and assistance desired".

And... although many publications listed when googling JARs MAYDAY DISTRESS refer to ICAO definitions, I can't actually find a JAR or ICAO document that defines the two conditions... lots of references and some fairly official sounding ones that even say that you should switch to 121.5 to make your call.

No wonder there is so many variations of opinion on when to use which.

But, based on everything I've read, including Felix's post, calling MAYDAY or PAN PAN and including a clear description of the gravity of the situation and what services you want, even if you don't think the controller understands you (anecdotally in China, for instance) is probably a good idea if you want to get exactly what you want, regardless as to what you prefix it with. ("Send the trucks" is probably not a good way to ask for fire services in non-english speaking countries.)

If you aren't going to land immediately or don't need any really unusual handling (or don't need to override ATC's directions) and the aircraft is controllable and you don't need trucks or ambulances for a half hour because you have to do checklists, then PAN PAN is probably all that is required. Bottom line, while ATC can call for emer services and let you fly where you want, the controller can't reach up and fly the aircraft for you, regardless as to how you call. I have heard a MAYDAY on the ocean and it just turned into a "Can we help you?" fest. "Ahhh.... NO".

Depending on what transcript you read, Sully may not have used the words MAYDAY, PAN PAN or Emergency and ATC did a great job of internal communications, was going to let him do anything he wanted and I've never read any report saying that he should have "declared". Things may not have kicked in quite so well in Russia, Korea or China, however, "We've lost both engines" in China is probably not as good as "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY we have lost power on both engines".

[Say Again, Over!]

Cute little bit of (probably useless) trivia: Mayday is a phonetic transcription of "M'aider" which literally means "Help me!" in French, while "Panne" is the French word for malfunction.

As a rule, we'll always err on the side of caution. Calling the trucks out and activating the call-out list comes at no extra charge to anybody so we're quite liberal with it. That's why you might be coming with three down and locked and still see the trucks on the side of the runway when you land because when you said you had an unsafe gear indication at the start of the event, we got everything in place right away. Of course, this never precludes clear communication between us all. If you end up telling us the gear is stuck DOWN, then we wouldn't bother.

As well, if you were to use the words "we're ok for now", we'd probably get all of the info and set things up so that if things become "not ok" while on final, there's no scrambing to be done: we're ready.

Basically, if ever you're unsure of the level of response you're receving, tell us. Use the keywords or otherwise communicate the priority you need. If you tell me you need to be on the ground in less than 3 minutes, it will actually get you faster service than "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, we need to land ASAP".

Felix