Originally Posted by
EDLB
Speedbird clearly stated an emergency with Mayday Mayday Mayday, and it was understood by ATC. Since they where coming back for a 3 engine MLW landing the airport had ARFF out. ATC did clear the airspace and runway for Speedbird. ATC will most likely not downgrade a Mayday in such a situation, why should they? ATC knows that the pilots have a very high workload in this situation, so they do not go in semantics. What needs to be done was clear and ATC helped as much as they could. Communicate comes always third for the pilots.
The ATC knew well what happened, with a good understanding of the urgency/gravity of the situation. They seem to have completely missed the MAYDAY call, never acknowledged it.
Calling MAYDAY (imminent danger to life) for a surge-shutdown is too much and would attract a negative remark with many TREs and Flt OPS standards departments. It's probably a BA policy (a reasonable approach against splitting hairs) to declare one for any power plant issues, and then downgrade. Which brings a question Can you really downgrade/cancel a MAYDAY? What do we expect the ATC, ARFF, MED and Airport OPS teams would do at that point?. Pull the red button back up and wire-seal it, climb the greasy pole to bunks?.