Compass today lost the cabin

[Dubya]

It's the underlying threat of FAA action and the contentious relationship between pilots and FAA inspectors/enforcement. I'm not arguing against the declaration, that's is and should be a no brainer. However, these guys will answer to anything that happened in that cockpit from push to block in, regardless of what it had to do with the events that required the emergency. Guaranteed. It's as close as the FAA can get to monitoring the cockpit 24/7/365.

In lieu of obvious infractions, they dig and press and threaten. It sounds like this crew did their job, but they will probably get a letter because of some innocuous bullsh!t that happened during taxi.

Rant off.

*that

 

[cale42]

To the comment that using the word "emergency" brings the FED's in. I do ask WHY you did not use the word..... And if you don't want to explain it to me, the NTSB Judge can and will ask the question.

The answer is simple.. because to me an emergency occurs when the safety of flight is in question. So if the safety is not in question I didn't use the word. End of explanation. As PIC of an individual flight I am the only one at that point in time that can determine when the safety of flight is in question.

As to the OP that says if ATC declares an emergency for you you are not doing your job let me present you with this scenario.

5 mile final I put the gear down. No right main gear indication. Well I know one of two things has happened, my right main isn't safely down and locked OR the two light bulbs have burned out. One is a clear emergency situation and one clearly is not. At this point in time I'm not sure which. So I choose to go around and hold while I troubleshoot and run the QRH. First words out of ATC's mouth without question are "why did you go around"(don't even get me started on the lunacy of telling pilots go arounds are a recommended pre-cautionary maneuver, yet requiring every major tower to keep logs of why planes went around) I answer I have a gear disagreement. Without question the next words are, do you require assistance and are you declaring an emergency. My answer is no to both until I know what the problem is. However for all I know at that point ATC declares an emergency for me just based on my term "gear disagreement". Any time they ask I just assume they might be doing it anyway.

Anyway.. long story short, I'm lucky to fly a plane that has secondary and tertiary gear indication systems. I run the QRH, discover the light bulbs are out, land uneventfully and head to the gate. Luckily ATC did not declare an emergency for me in this case, but they easily could have. They are not pilots and they are not in the cockpit at the time, just because they second guess a pilots decision doesn't make that decision wrong.

And in this particular example there is a big difference between "lost cabin pressure" and "losing cabin pressure". If you lose the bleeds at 20'000 feet and everything else is working fine it is going to take quite a while to get to an unsafe cabin altitude. It is wise to start descending while you troubleshoot, but I don't consider the cabin slowly climbing to be an immediate threat to safety of flight. Also you don't know what altitudes the aircraft was at when he made his requests. If he got assigned 15,000 maybe he was still descending through 18,000 when he again asked for lower. Maybe the next word out of his mouth after he asked for 10,000 were going to be "we are declaring an emergency".

cale

 

[fugghedabowdit]

I've declared three times, never heard a thing about it. Trucks followed me to the gate, someone from CFR took my name, that's it.

Can anyone tell me when a crew got violated for declaring an emergency? That seems like a slippery slope to me. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just curious.

 

[Long Time Gone]

Declaring an emergency after they had stalled the plane & core-locked their engines wouldn't have really changed the outcome much...

Did they know this at the time of the situation? Absolutely not. What they did know is that they had a dual engine failure, and that the safety of the flight was in jeopardy. They also knew that they screwed up royally and had probably hoped to get both engines running again as to avoid the paperwork and interviews that would be forthcoming. Curiosity kills cats, and arrogance kills pilots.

 

[crj567]

So I'm flying along today in NY airspace and compass comes on and says he's lost "cabin pressurisation". He seemed calm and not like he was wearing a mask so I figure he's okay and he means his cabin is starting to climb.

He asks for 10,000 but ATC can only give him 15k. A few minuets later compass comes back and says now he has a cabin pressure warning going off and would like 10,000. At this point ATC says, "compass, I'm declaring an emergency for you, turn right (some heading) and descend 10,000" and the discussion turns on where to divert.

My point of posting this is this:

Why are pilots so freaking hesitant to declare a freaking emergency?

Here is the criteria for those who may not know;

A. The safe outcome of the flight is at all uncertain, or

B. You need to excecute a maneuver right now without ATC clearance.

This one is clearly B. You lose or start to lose the cabin and can't get control then you need down...now. You are about to fly into magenta on your radar? You need a turn and if ATC says unable you say "I am declaring an emergency and turning to xxx heading"

There seems to be a common thought with many pilots that it's bad, or wrong, or weak, or who knows what to declare an emergency. And if ATC ever has to declare an emergency for you then odds are pretty strong that you're not doing your job of declaring yourself and you let the situation go way too far.

Remember "Flagship" and their little adventure from FL410? More guys refusing to just declare it and get the help they needed. And for no reason.

This bozo will probably show up on DAL's seniority list soon-Congrats!

 

[flyboyzii]

I've declared three times, never heard a thing about it. Trucks followed me to the gate, someone from CFR took my name, that's it.

Can anyone tell me when a crew got violated for declaring an emergency? That seems like a slippery slope to me. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, just curious.

Same here. Nothing ever came about in my situation either.

 

[livin'thesim]

Paging KMOX...

 

[Salukipilot4590]

You think those two jokers deserved that?

They deserved what happened to them!

Oh wow...lulz.

You forgot this emoticon http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/f1/Trollface_HD.jpg

 

[DYLIN]

So I'm flying along today in NY airspace and compass comes on and says he's lost "cabin pressurisation". He seemed calm and not like he was wearing a mask so I figure he's okay and he means his cabin is starting to climb.

He asks for 10,000 but ATC can only give him 15k. A few minuets later compass comes back and says now he has a cabin pressure warning going off and would like 10,000. At this point ATC says, "compass, I'm declaring an emergency for you, turn right (some heading) and descend 10,000" and the discussion turns on where to divert.

My point of posting this is this:

Why are pilots so freaking hesitant to declare a freaking emergency?

Here is the criteria for those who may not know;

A. The safe outcome of the flight is at all uncertain, or

B. You need to excecute a maneuver right now without ATC clearance.

This one is clearly B. You lose or start to lose the cabin and can't get control then you need down...now. You are about to fly into magenta on your radar? You need a turn and if ATC says unable you say "I am declaring an emergency and turning to xxx heading"

There seems to be a common thought with many pilots that it's bad, or wrong, or weak, or who knows what to declare an emergency. And if ATC ever has to declare an emergency for you then odds are pretty strong that you're not doing your job of declaring yourself and you let the situation go way too far.

Remember "Flagship" and their little adventure from FL410? More guys refusing to just declare it and get the help they needed. And for no reason.

Without explosive decompression you have a long time until cabin pressure is an issue.

Really no need to declare an emergency.

 

[fugghedabowdit]

And you can fly all day on one engine...but I'd still declare an emergency if I lost one.

 

[regionalcap]

Without explosive decompression you have a long time until cabin pressure is an issue.

Really no need to declare an emergency.

True but if your cabin altitude warning is going off then you should be declaring.

 

[WSurf]

Reminds me when I was an FO and some IAD controller on some high horse. We had nasty weather in front of us. We gave him heads up that in 10 miles we were gonna need a turn to the south. He never came back to us. So 8 miles I clicked on and said we are gonna need a turn to the south for weather. Still he ignored us.
Then my Captain looked at me and said tell him one more time. So I did and the guy smarts back and says "unable."
My Captain Calmly looks at me turns to the south....... At the same time clicks on the radio and says we are declaring an emergency and turning to heading 180. He follows it up by saying we are turning south and have fixed our problem now you can fix yours!!! LOL The guy was one of those Captains that you'd always want to fly with and be.
Then an American Airlines Pilot clicked on and said he was doing the same.... Ahhh how sweet!
We never had any problems.... But my Captain Noted the time and the Freq. and made some calls. Seems they had some problems with this controller.

 

[urflyingme?!]

I've declared and had an emergency declared for me, nobody ever called… Grow a pair, declare.

 

[SLUF4]

Declared emergencies several times with no call from the feds or anyone else. a more likely call would be asking why you didn't declare an emergency and use all resources available. I think a lot of it is pilots scared of filling out paperwork

 

[glasspilot]

And that's the point.

When did pilots become more fearful of paperwork than of the environment they work?

When I posted this I gave the condensed version and my post still went pretty long. I left out the 3 minutes or so between reporting the cabin warning and ATC declaring the emergency for him. They were chatting about airports, aircraft that are being cleared so they can get lower and what not. The whole time I was thinking, "just declare and get down!" finally ATC did it for him.

I've probably declared a dozen or so emergencies from smoke in the cabin to shut down engines to flight control surface issues. Never had anyone ever question it.