Originally Posted by NE_Pilot
It was not that the controller did not hear the emergency and emergencyconditions being stated, it was that the controller did not believe that it wasa real emergency
I think it was more that he wasn't able to reconcile the transmission with any of his known traffic.
The little prefix indicating the airline was missing. The voice was (apparently) new, its timbre probably changed due to factors already mentioned. The audio quality probably wasn't that great, either.
If the full callsign had been used, I suggest the outcome, in regard to the timing of the trucks being "rolled" might have been quite different.
Down here, in non-America land, if I'd heard that transmission,
and knew (or had reason to believe) it came from one of the a/c on my frequency, I wouldn't have needed an ICAO-formal distress call to get the fire service alerted, and I'd suggest no other controller, anywhere in the world, would, either. As soon as you become aware that someone has a problem, whether formally declared or not, you treat it the same way as if they had said the ''magic words".
The advantage of prefixing such a call with the appropriate words is that it will get our undivided attention immediately, instead of after the words "emergency,smoke in the cockpit", by which time the callsign had obviously been not heard correctly.
As 1Charlie said, a "say again" button on the ATC comms console would have been useful. (Replays the last transmission.)