Declare an Emergency early and often!

OK just kidding. I finished reading the great post about a failed vaccum in
IMC and the happy outcome. I wanted to post this message to share something
I learned some time ago when I participated in a university research
program.

The researcher was investigating pilot's decision to declare emergencies.
It's a widely held view that declaring an emergency when confronted with a
difficult in-flight situation is something that one must carefully consider.
There seems to be worry that one will face a paperwork hassle, a grilling by
a friendly FAA rep., endless second-guessing, or being reported for further
enforcement action. It's not true. In nearly all cases all that happens
when declaring an emergency is you get all the help there is to be offered
and priority handling by ATC. In fact, there's a lot less chance you will
be hassled by anyone for some minor technical FAR violation if you have
declared the emergency.

Many pilots seem to follow the same Hollywood script and try to edge up nice
and close to declaring an emergency without doing so formally. There's no
need for this. If you're in doubt about whether your situation is an
emergency, delcare it. It doesn't make your condition worse, the
professionals on the other end of the radio won't have to give you emergency
service and pretend you haven't declared. Just say it! Your name and
N-Number aren't going to be forwarded to D.C. for a C.S.I. type forensic
investigation looking for an excuse to pull your ticket. The most likely
outcome of declaring the emergency is you'll be asked to call ATC so the
people that worked the situation will know you are OK.

I'd be interested to read if others have some other reason for not declaring
an emergency if they have a problem in the airplane. I think it would be
helpful if whatever reasons any of us may have for not making the
declaration could be discussed. It may be there is not one single reason to
avoid doing so but I'm pretty sure some of us other lower-time pilots have
unexpresed reasons we assume we shouldn't declare. Maybe some of the
professional pilots have company-specific reasons that would shed light on
the matter.

I remember the study researcher and I joking that what I learned from his
program was that dropping my pen on the cockpit floor during IMC might be my
new threshold of an emergency, not the previous "fire is melting the spar
and we're breaking up."

--
Scott

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill

Tscottme,

I couldn't agree more. In fact, controllers can declare the emergency
status for a pilot if they feel the situation warrants it.

I was once going to Albuquerque and had a rough running engine. We
requested a straight in from very far out (outside the control zone)
since we could have glided in from there and didn't want to make any
detours. We were granted that, a Boeing 737 had to be sent into a short
hold because of us and we were asked if we needed assistance getting
off the runway. I'm sure the tower treated this as an emergency. No
paperwork or even any questioning came off it. Why didn't we declare?
We were always in gliding range of the airport and were two experienced
glider pilots on board, so we didn't feel the need.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

I was on an IFR training flight, with my instructor, from Cameron Park
airport to Chico and back... This flight took us right over Beale
AFB... On the way back, the engine started running really rough to the
point of near failure. Carb heat didn't resolve the problem, mixture
didn't resolve the problem, and everytime we applied power the engine
would choke and bog down even more. Obviously I took off the hood and
started going through the emergency procedures, with my instructor (we
went through them a couple of times).

We were directly above Beale AFB and 5000 feet... We were already
talking to ATC as this was a simulated IFR flight, and told them that
we were having engine problems and wanted to know if Beale was an
option. ATC came back and asked, "five sierra mike, would you like to
declare an emergency?". Our reply, "errr, umm, standby...". The
engine had not completely stopped, but certainly wasn't providing
enough power to attempt to go anywhere else, so after a few seconds of
"what should we do", we replied, "five sierra mike would like to
declare an emergency". ATC immediately contacted Beale tower and
informed them of our situation, came back and told us to switch to
Beale tower frequency. We swithed over to tower and circled to land
from 5000 feet, which seemed to take an eternity.

Our greeting on the taxi-way, just off the runway (flashing lights and
all), was as we would have expected, being only a year after 9-11, but
all-in-all, they were very understanding. We went into base-ops and
gave them our relative information, got a ride home from the FBO/owner
of the plane and never heard another word about it.

The experience was actually very positive! We never got hasseled by
the FAA and ATC was very helpful in the transition to an emergency
landing at a high profile AFB.

My point in sharing this experience and responding to your post is
that, like you said, it really was no big deal. If I had another
situation that warranted a possible emergency declaration, I wouldn't
even hesitate.

BTW - The cause of the engine failure, as I was informed, was
vapor-lock???

Best Regards,
Todd

"tscottme" wrote in message
...
In nearly all cases all that happens
when declaring an emergency is you get all the help there is to be offered
and priority handling by ATC. In fact, there's a lot less chance you will
be hassled by anyone for some minor technical FAR violation if you have
declared the emergency.

I've never had to declare an emergency so far (my alternator died in
mid-taxi once, and was noticed during the run-up checks, and I had a radio
PTT switch break but simply plugged into the right-hand seat's radio port
instead) but have had been asked to get out of the way while someone else
had one. It was a Jet Provost, flown by one of our local clubs, who called
to say he had a bit of smoke in the cockpit, which he assumed (correctly, it
turned out) was probably from the odd spot of oil dripping onto something
hot. In the end the fleet of flashing lights that met him mid-runway weren't
needed, but the fact that an emergency was declared got him on the ground
sharpish and with all the equipment around him to deal with a more serious
problem.

Importantly, the blokes in the fire crew mentioned later that they didn't
mind a bit, as it's good practice and it makes the day more interesting.

D.

David Cartwright wrote:


Importantly, the blokes in the fire crew mentioned later that they didn't
mind a bit, as it's good practice and it makes the day more interesting.

Yes, I would think that responding, even to a false alarm, would be a
lot more fun than sitting and playing cards all day.

Matt