ATC have no idea what's going on in a cockpit in an emergency situation and it's always our priority to deal with that emergency (by "AVIATING") before we tell them what has happened.
True. Using the same logic, the pilot(s) have little or no idea what is going on OUTSIDE their cockpit. ATC's priority is to keep the emergency acft
and every other acft in the airspace safe.
Recent example in my neck of the woods demonstrated how far from reality the pilot's version of events can actually be:
Acft RTB with a PAN. Once back on the ground he emailed his boss (who emailed mine, who emailed me) saying he was not at all happy with ATC's handling of his emergency, for the following reasons:
1) He said he was "vectored all over the sky for separation" (untrue, and yes, tapes confirm, he was vectored twice, both in response to his request for a "SW heading" and then an "E heading to remain close to the airfield" - never for separation, which was applied vertically at this stage).
2) He said he was delayed on descent. (He was given intial descent to F130 (from F200) with a MED 1 acft passing beneath at F110 - the A020 ft was used because the pilot was cleared to dump fuel and had not advised fuel dump complete and A020 is required for the vapour zone. The pilot called visual with the MED 1 acft and was told "further descent available in 2 mins due fuel dump". He then advised that he had "delayed" the fuel dump and was given further descent).
3) He said he was never given an area of ops and a block level clearance for him to trouble shoot. (Wrong again, once clear of other traffic he was issued "operate within 20nm radius of xxxx block A050-A100). He then asked for a futher heading (NE this time) and the controller confirmed "heading available if required, but you are cleared to manouvre as required within 20nm of xxxx")
4) He said he had to ask for another acft to be vectored out of his way when he decided to do a dirty dart on to final. (Wrong again, he reported sighting the other acft and asked for a VSA in front, which he was given, the other acft was then broken off the ILS and vectored back out to the north - not required for separation purposes, but better for sequencing).
At the time of the emergency, including the MED 1 acft, there were 12 other acft within 20nm, of these a further 3 were either in conflict, or heading towards conflict with the emergency acft (vertical solved this initially) and the controller had to get them out of the way as well as process the remainder of the traffic on frequency.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the cockpit workload of a pilot trying to troubleshoot several different warnings/alerts, however, I can not make all the other acft simply disappear immediately from your preferred area of ops.
Have to say my smpathy waned somewhat after both reading the initial email (which was rather nasty in tone) and then the deafening silence which followed after we sent them the transcript of what really happened along with an invitation to come over and review the tapes...
But the real eye-opener, to me, was that the pilot's perception of what actually occurred could be so far removed from reality and that he seemed to suggest that ATC deliberately "stuffed him around"?!!!
The sky is not so big in TMA....