The most Critical Situation you faced before !!!

[cap.hany]

hay my captains, :)
i am not yet ATCO but i will be so soon ISA i'm just new graduated.

ofcourse during your work hours you may face abnormal situations.

yes that what i want from you,,, :ok:
just write the most critical situation you faced before, try to act like an author in your writing to attract us as must as you can so as to make us live the situation with you, and then tell us about your reactions, then read the members comments on that situation....
and to obtain a nice time which may produce some experience to some of us, let's make a coordination as ATC units :)

the 1st to read that topic and has a situation shall write it,
then no one add any other situations, just send me a private message and i will make an announcement with the second situation in order, subject to the order of messages came to me from the members. ( that is my suggestion to ensure good analyzing for the situation and to discuss it in a perfect way )

also if you did a mistake in any previous situation during the work and you wanna share it here without permission to any body to know, just send it to me in a private message and i will write it for you.

all of that is just suggestions from me to exchange experience between each other,
please even you will not participate here just tell us about your opinion , don't read and go.

Waiting for your posts.
--------------------------
Cap.hany

[bottom rung]

We ran out of tea bags once.... and the shops were shut.

[Scooby Don't]

Cap.hany, please habibi, can you post in a normal font? Also, controllers are not captains! You will get more replies if you remember that....

In the spirit of comradeship (Eid Mubarak, by the way), after 13 years or so in ATC, the following is a partial list of situations I've faced. Most controllers will have a similar list.

Radar failure

Radio failure (at ATC - resolved with use of stand-by radios)

Radio failure (aircraft)

Engine failures

Assymetric flap deployment

Partial hydraulic failures/hydraulic leaks

Nosewheel steering failure

Cracked windshields (yes, plural!)

Level/altitude busts

Language "issues"

Weather avoidance

Unknown fast traffic popping up into controlled airspace ("one o'clock, half a mile, going up....")

Zone infringements

Runway infringements

Flooded taxiway

Overheating Spitfire shutting down on a narrow taxiway

Fire in avionics bay/smoke in cockpit

and a few more besides. Also, on a Lufthansa 747-400, it really p*ssed me off that every other passenger seemed to be using the toilet seat cover dispenser as a garbage bin. I once slept in and was half an hour late for a morning shift, and got soundly berated by the WM while I was plugged in.... And the time I was asked to escort a group of "young ladies from British Airways" around the tower, they turned out to be a captain's 11-year old daughter and her school chums rather than the trolley dollies I was hoping for.

[choclit runway]

2 1/2 hours on Ground needing a pee pee...

[anotherthing]

All of Scoobys list (well, apart from the Spitfire),

plus whilst on watch -

a mid air between a police helicopter and a light aircraft,

A tail dragging aircraft taxying into a ground vehicle, almost decapitating the work experience kid in the passenger seat,

2 fighters returning with extensive damage after colliding during ACM (outstanding flying to get them both back)

Two fatal crashes, one involving a dear friend :(

[Standard Noise]

2 hours in Radar on a Sunday morning while a succession of selfish b****rds cook fry ups in the kitchen, one level below the ACR! :mad::{

[Tower Ranger]

One Sunday morning i almost had to leave the kitchen whilst eating my fry to do radar but then I remembered we`d left standard noise there!!

[Still Wee Jock]

Spilt my coffee down the Hadleigh box

Trapped the supervisors arm between the PAR and director console causing so much screaming everyone thought she was being murdered

Asked to turn TV down coz Corrie was too loud

Mayday C177 with total electrics failure IMC, had a mobile phone and an altimeter working (talked him down into another airport on the DFTI - imagine getting away with that nowadays)

Toppled off chair

Ejected from radar room for laughing too much (it was a competition to see who could get kicked out first)

Went home with tower key in my pocket during an exercise (yup, there was only one)

Gassed by muppet painting the intake of the radar room air conditioning system

Made rude controller tea with a tea bag specially selected from the bin

F4 double flameout (nav didn't make it, RIP, 31 years ago but will never forget)

Hijacked Sudanese Airbus

BAe146 with missing oil seals, two engines shut down, one at idle and the other being thrashed to death

[canard68]

During an airshow a bi-plane reported a possible fire. Aerodrome fire service would not answer crash phone so after landing I told the aircraft to taxi across the grass to the fire station car park.

[TC_Ukraine]

2 conflicting aircraft (opposite direction): one of them disappeared from radar screen for 2 minutes or so, and another didn’t respond to my instructions. :ugh:

[rej]

Walking into the ACR in time to see 3 supervisors, 2 LEOs and 6 fully qualified controllers sit and watch a sep loss develop on final approach without doing anything to prevent it.:ugh:

[AKAFresh]

Air Traffic more like Air Tragic! :}

[bottom rung]

Air Tragic? Hey, thats a good one! Never heard that one before! Hopefully you have some more funnies for us.







Come on, we are waiting........

[grizzled]

Five Thirty a.m. and all was quiet in the ACC; the managers, supervisors, techs and assistants would all start arriving about 6. The IT techs had recently shown us the secret way to put video games on the sector radar displays. Now we couldn't get the bloody video games off the Departure display or the East Sector display. The only solution was to disable both and complain loudly to the arriving dayshift about the display failures . . .

I guess a close second would be the time we found out that a Danger Area was hot with SAM firings (USA Airspace) after we'd been running aircraft through it for 40 minutes . . .

[Navigator33]

Ouch! That could have been some nice fireworks!

[songbird29]

How about that nightshift who managed to alter the clock system to run backwards and could't reverse it into situation normal.

[Lady-ATC]

this one`s my favourite!!!

[VectorLine]

http://www.avoidingaction.net/images/george_n_lynn_b0001.jpg

[Skyjuggler]

A couple of years ago I had a really bad run as an ATCO with multiple accidents on my watch. Nothing ATC wise, just the standard hydraulic failures, electric failures, RCF's that kind of thing. I was complaining to a buddy of mine about this just before he flew down to his private strip down south. Not 5 minutes after getting airborne he yells "MAYDAY" and tells me that he was doing an emergency landing on the beach.
My response: "Rob?! Are you joking?!"
Rob: "I wish, I have a fire in the cockpit..."
Glad to say he was able to put her down safely on the beach and all was fine. Conisdering the severity of the situation, we were able to have a good chuckle that night over some beers...

[Hold West]

9/11/2001.

[Frunobulax]

2 conflicting aircraft (opposite direction): one of them disappeared from radar screen for 2 minutes or so, and another didn’t respond to my instructions. :ugh:


This one's really nasty.