Emergency squawk
 

Originally posted on a thread on Private Flying, but presumably not frequented by ATCO's so re-posted here!

Ta

It depends on which ATC system is being used. Pretty much all systems though will make an aural alert of some kind, and usually the label will change coulour to red and will flash with an indication of what kind of emergency is being experienced eg. HIJ, RAD, EMG. It will usually show on all positions so even if the controller concerned has recently undergone a frontal lobotomy and happens to miss it, everyone else in the ops room will see it.

Hope that helps.

Invariably there is an attention-getter - usually the label flashing, with additional "mayday" or "emerg" data line. Can also have a - quiet - audio alarm. Boxing glove on spring would be technically possible.

on my radar it will flash SOS RTFAIL HIJACK also down at the Distress and Diversion cell alarm bells start ringing. We don't get any aural alert, just the visual reference on the radar

No aural warning at eghh. squawk code flashes red and small insertbox on screen shows range/bearing of subject aircraft from airfield.

No aural alarm is interesting. Every system I have worked has had some kind of annoying alarm. It can be annoying, but better annoy me than let me not notice it.

In UK you can get a lot of spurious alarms due to traffic density and garbling of squawks. There is thought in NATS of giving audible alarms for STCA but once again you're probably going to get a lot of spurious ones and you can then get desensitised to the alarm, so you mentally ignore it. Not good for when you really need to have it go off.

BD

I understand that there's ATC sets that allow you to set a altitude band you're interested in, effectively suppressing all returns below or above this band (I assume based on the mode C readout). Does a 7700 code outside your band show up as well in that case? After all, these aircraft might be making an uncontrolled descend (or sometimes even an ascend) into your sector.

Where i work the emergency code would show through all height filters.

Our system forces certain codes for display, regardless of height filter settings. The three codes mentioned at the start of the thread amongst them.

In LSGG it's the same as everywhere else. Emergency code displayed at all working positions, no aural alarm, and indication of the type of emergency with the label forced in red: EMG - RCF - HIJ
In the case of the pic are not able to set the emergency squawk, we have the opportunity to display it manualy when the pilots annonce an emergency. Just push a specific menu on the label, and the info EMERGENCY if forced to all working position.

In our new system, your target will turn from the standard pale yellow to a bright flashing red, the whole datatag included.

On top of that we get a loud audiable BOOP (best description sorry) followed by a sexy british (Not sure why british since we're in Canada) female voice which says for some reason in a sultry tone:

"Emergency"
"Radio Failure"
"Hi-Jack"

Gets your attention.