"Peter R."
Gary Drescher wrote:

Peter, could you explain your uncertainty? Do you see any room for
ambiguity
with regard to the AIM passages I cited to establish that "pan-pan"
declares
an emergency? (If so, could you elaborate?)

What is this, a test?

Seriously, my uncertainty has to do with the "if A equals B and B equals
C,
then A must equal C" logic used in the AIM.

In other words, one reads in the AIM chapter that you posted earlier that
an urgent situation equals an emergency, but then one has to go to the
glossary to discover that PAN-PAN equals an urgent situation.

Why not simply state in the chapter you referenced that "announcing
PAN-PAN" will be treated as an emergency by ATC?

Does it have to do with the attendant paperwork? Declaring an emergency
means a whole bunch of paperwork. The few times I've had a potentially
serious problem, ATC treated it as a potentially serious situation. In one
case it required rerouting landing airliner traffic. And, declaring an
emergency, for the pilot, means you can do pretty much anything you need to,
such as breaking regulations, to save the day. Isn't that what we're
taught?

moo