Emergency Protocol
Just a quick question for our ATC colleagues.
The other day a light aircraft (retractable single) arrived at EG** with an apparent landing gear problem. The pilot made a couple of low inspection passes before electing to land at this single runway International airport. Fortunately the gear was fine and he was able to taxi clear and life went on as normal. If, however, the gear had collapsed, the runway would have been blocked for some considerable time awaiting AAIB attendance causing very considerable disruption to the commercial programme for many hours. Weather was not an issue and judging by the very large circuit patterns being utilised neither was fuel but obviously I have no definitive information as to the latter.
In such a situation, do you as controllers have any discretion to advise the aircraft to divert to an alternative airfield which could adequately deal with such a scenario without the obvious knock-on effect to normal operations ? In this instance there are at least two significant GA airfields within ten minutes flying time with emergency equipment available.
I would add at this juncture that I do not know if the aircraft in question was due arrive at EG** or was using the airport as best option in this scenario. Clearly sympathy is due to the pilot in question who was no doubt more than a little concerned with his plight and controllers will assist as much as they can to get him on the ground. The same airfield was recently closed in a high profile incident by a medium size freight aircraft which blocked the runway for a long period of time causing major delays - this incident (no prizes for guessing which airport now !) was clearly much different in scale.
Answers on a postcard please