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.
As ATC, I don’t care what is declared by the crew for a 50% loss of power in terms of emergency response, my procedures will say what I have to declare as the emergency response (Local Standby or Full Emergency) based on the actual problem. If the crew declare a MAYDAY or PAN they’ll be given the appropriate priority over over traffic. I’ve had a 50% loss of power come in without declaring anything at all, but I still put on a Full Emergency.
Likewise for partial hydraulic failures, we’ve put Full Emergencies for those many times without any priority being declared by the crew.
I’ve also had MAYDAY declared for a sick passenger...this required no emergency response.
I still feel some here are conflating state of urgency with emergency response.