Originally Posted by
parkfell
I would suggest that an engine failure would result in an emergency being declared. There is however a school of thought that a simple flame out (loss of thrust) would only merit a PAN call on an Airbus 320.
Call me old fashioned, but when 50% of thrust/power is lost with a much higher percentage of performance that is a MAYDAY in my book every time.
Can you give me an example when a MAYDAY declared, and ATC “might not take any response at all”. I am curious.
from a deep and distant dark memory from air law loss of more than 33% of power plant is an automatic mayday. 1 engine on a twin is always a mayday. Anymore engines and it’s a “depends”.
however in practical world I’ve had 2 situations in my career. 1 was a full mayday with loss of multiple hydraulic systems that we would never have downgraded. The other we lost some electric systems which led to downgraded flap extension (landed with reduced flap) but we were empty so we were still landing at a lower speed than with a normal traffic load. We hadn’t declared a pan or a mayday but we were returning to departure airfield and we told them exactly what was happening. We told them we were still expecting to make a normal landing and being able to vacate at the normal exit with no issues hindering our return to stand. We were still met with the full blues and two’s.
Now personally from a pilot perspective If I need to I’ll declare a mayday, and not bother downgrading till I’ve **** down and deal with the paperwork later.
I fly all over the world, not everyone understands a pan and I don’t want the additional mental maths of “is it a pan, is it a mayday, what exactly does my ops manual say again”. Mayday and be done with it.