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[Airboss72]

Hi all,
I am currently preparing for an annual se...Webinar, for ATCO's. The objective is to give the perspective of the flight crew in various situations of flight operations. One question that popped in last year's seminar which was a great success, was the one concerning an inbound "MAYDAY aircraft" and the point in time where an ANSU will stop all movement at the airport. As an airline driver, and considering that a twin-jet runs roughly 4 nautical miles per minute, i would suggest that a 40 mile mark would do the job, but bottom line is that it's up to the controller in charge or the supervisor.
Your opinion and/or knowledge would be helpful in order to clarify these matters.

[Equivocal]

No easy answer, I'm afraid. It will depend on many things, notably including the cause of the emergency and other traffic. Individual controllers' decisions will be affected by local policies and instructions. In some places, there is a view that a runway (or even airport) should be sterilised from the moment an emergency is declared until that aircraft is on the ground and all problems dealt with, in other places there seems to be no prevailing view. It's becoming common for the category of emergency declared at an airport (not the same thing as that declared by a pilot) to be determined by the problem reported by the distress aircraft, but I don't think I've seen any instructions that specify the point at which other operations should stop.

[jmmoric]

As said above, not an easy answer.

At a small airport where we're one tower controller and one approach comtroller, or even running it combined with a single controller handling both, it's more used to "shut down" traffic to be able to focus on the aircraft in distress and handle the extra work associated with the situation (mostly informing other units etc.) than larger airports where you have more resources at hand.

[10 DME ARC]

I have worked at a few major airports and most official distances were 10nm dual ruways available or 20nm single runway. This could be changed as the situation demanded as no emergency is the same!