Emergency descent or not ?
A few years back when in the cruise at FL410 I had a left pack trip off, just as the power was coming back at top of descent & cleared down to FL330 the right pack tripped off.
Within seconds I got the left pack online, the first officer asked for decent to FL100, then I ran the drill for getting the right pack back on line the left pack tripped off line !
By now the FO had the aircraft in a rapid descent and I got the right pack on line and we continued down to FL100.
At no time did the cabin altitude exceed 8000 ft or the cabin rate of climb exceed 300 ft/ min.
Once the right pack had demonstrated that it was staying on line I had time to brief the cabin crew but the passengers were clueless as to the goings on and did not realise that we had in effect made an emergency descent from FL410 to FL100.
I did as the problem started say to the FO that if I loose control of the cabin PX it was to be masks on and full emergency decent drills and in my mind had set a cabin ROC of 800 ft/ min to trigger this action.
So from this I have concluded that passengers only plummet towards the ground if they know that they are in an emergency descent or the newspapers tell them so and the descent it's self alone is not enought to merit comment from passengers.
Lets not make a drama out of a non crisis.
Last edited by A and C; 15th Jun 2013 at 10:52.