US 1549 ATC Audio

[Jaffo]

Did anybody notice that the controller kept calling them "cactus 1529" instead of "cactus 1549"? Anyone who has flown lately knows when a controller uses the wrong call sign we don't pay attention to what they are saying. Notice he keeps calling "cactus 1529", to no response!

 

[kf4amu]

I heard a few "USAir" in there too.

Controllers did great. Unless you've been in a position of controlling and coordinating traffic, you have no idea how hard it is to be perfect all the time. The best you can expect is not to make the situation worse, and just do the best you can at the time. We have no idea how many resources this controller had available at the time...many controllers work by themselves without a D-side. The guy has a dozen things to do immediately and the longer he takes to prioritize them in his head, the longer it takes to get them done. Sometimes you just pick one of the more important ones, do it, and keep going down the list that you are constantly changing the order of in your head, while adding other items to it as people call you on the phone, supervisors yell at you for info, radio traffic...

It's like critiquing a crew when they didn't do everything perfectly in an emergency. OMG They didn't hit the "ditching switch!".

 

[SLUF4]

100 and 1/2, maybe you are right and in time we will see, but for now you are making a big assumption that the cactus crew asked to do something and the controller denied it. You have no evidence at this point to back up your claim. When the NTSB releases its report I'm sure it won't cover for the FAA if they did something like that and you will see the whole transcript. Of course it will most likely match this one. Can you imagine what the media would do if they found out the FAA had edited this stuff? I just don't think that happened.

 

[DiverDriver]

I for one think this controller did as good as anyone could do. He had seconds to try and get a mental picture of what this crew at low altitude was needing. I hope some recognition goes to this controller for keeping it together with other metal moving at high rates of speed while dealing with this emergency. I see nothing in this that the controller did wrong.

 

[starchkr]

Sounds like everyone did a fine job!

One thing that had me wondering was the lack of CRC's in the background when cactus made radio transmissions. I had previously thought that when they lost the engines, or one of them with one producing "some" power, that the CRC's would be going off with the ECAM ding continuously going as well as systems drop off line. I guess not. Maybe that one engine producing "some" power enabled all systems to operate normally for the short remainder of the flight...but i would still think the one engine being shut down with the switch in the on position should have set off some bells...I will see if i can simulate the engine loss and one engine at 35% in my next PC/PT just to see what exactly the "sim" says will happen.