Originally Posted by
Flyguy2006
Translation (until a better one comes up):
We were told to go to rwy 01 hold at 21.000ft, and then ordered to 19.000ft.
When we were at 19.000ft the RJ85 was above us and was asking ATC (female ATCO) “We ask for priority and to proceed directly to the runway, we ask for priority and to proceed to the localizer, we have a fuel problem”
It occurred to me that the Captain said he had a fuel problem and can’t declare an emergency in that moment.
“We have a problem, the plane is making an emergency landing, we’ll proceed, we’ll proceed, we have a fuel problem” and they started to descend.
The controller then asked (us) “AVIANCA 9256 turn left heading …” whatever to at least make us avoid that sh*t. We even saw their lights passing us while they were descending.
The controller then asked “Are you declaring an emergency” and the pilot replied “yes, we are declaring an emergency, we have fuel problems” and then made the mayday call.
The controller direct them to the localizer for rwy 01 and asked “please inform what is your problem” and they replied “now we have total electrical failure! (we need) vectors to the runway”
The controller said she couldn’t do that because she didn’t have them on radar.
They asked again “help us, vectors to the runway” and kept asking continuously. We could understand someone shouting in the background – “gear down”
Then the controller said “you’re at the 180 radial of rwy 01 at 9000ft, about 8 miles”
But they kept on asking “help us Miss, vectors to the runway” until they were heard no more.
This went on for about two minutes.
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