Hello everybody, in my company there is some misunderstanding about commencing the emergency descend, some pilots are of the opinion that if we are cruising at 16000 feet and encounter rapid decompression then select open descend to reach 10000 feet whereas other pilots believe emergency descend is the correct procedure to reach to the legal height i.e 10000 feet
Hi,
as you are probably referring to Airbus according to the terminology you have used, it is mentioned in the FCTM that an emergency descent is required if you experience a sudden uncontrollable and excessive cabin altitude. In other words if you estimate that you can reach 10'000 ft before the cabin altitude does then you don't have to apply the emergency descent procedure, that would be the case of a slow decompression (door leakage, loss of Packs, Bleeds) with the airplane flying at relatively low cruising FL as in your example.