Greetings all, I am new, as the little sign below my name says. I hope that I contribute something useful to this forum rather than pee people off with a load of ignorant comments. I will most likely be asking more questions than giving answers. I hope you won't mind that. On the subject above however, I do have something to say rather than ask.
I am not so sure any pilot would ever want to squawk 7700 unless he and his plane were in some deep poop. Somebody I know had an emergency not too long ago. He was caught in a bad hail storm as he tried to land at Lanseria (FALA), South Africa. He had his radar taken out, he had no nose cone left, the leading edges of his wings were badly damaged and other minor damage to the fuselage. How his propellers survived, I don't know. He was flying a King Air E90. He landed safely at ORT (FAOR), previously known as Johannesburg International (FAJS) after ATC at Lanseria declared an emergency on his behalf.
He told me the paper work IE: filing reports took hours. Not to mention landing costs, parking costs and all the other charges and so on, which was the other half of the paper work.
Note that I said, ATC at Lanseria declared the emergency on his behalf and handed him over to ORT. He didn't want to declare an emergency because he knew what was coming if he did. That is why I can't understand why any pilot in his right mind would squawk 7700 and/or declare an emergency unless he felt his plane was in mortal danger.
I agree with Nitpicker300. Informing ATC that there is a sick passenger on board and asking for priority would have been a much better option in a perfectly functional undamaged plane.