This morning we overheard a BA, and later an EZY crew trying to help out an apparently lost pilot with only 15 min of fuel left somewhere near Tours (France). The crews were guiding him on 121.5 and at some stage there was talk about a fighter going after the (probably private) lost plane. If I recall well it was BAW 54 (45). I'm curious to find out what happened there and if the plane landed safely. Tx for any info.

Garp, have you got a time on this event please ? ( don't s'pose you have the EZY flight number by any chance ? )

Hopefully the guy landed safely.

I was monitoring 121.5 at the time. BA54 was giving him a lot of help and I wasn't able to listen in all the time but the last transmissions I heard seemed to indicate that he was approaching Orleans with a (presumably French AF) jet assisting him. Don't know if he landed safely.

It was about 0600 UTC 01/03/03. I didn't catch a flightnumber on the EZY. The lost plane's (partial) c/s was O(scar M(ike).

Thanks Garp.

Well done to all the crews involved.

Anyone know the outcome ?

I overheard on the French radio news that the plane was helped by a Mirage (2000 or 4000, my altzheimer is dubious about that) and landed safely on the Orleans air force base (Bricy I guess). Could not find anything on the newspapers or radio websites.

Glad he made it . Are you guys fed up flying over the UK and all you hear is practise steers being requested on 121.5. It clutters up the freq for the real events as above. If I were UK control I would politely tell them to go away. Any thoughts?

I think Practice Pans for student ppl's are invaluable in teaching, and giving them practice on 121.5. If a read mayday happened during a practice pan, I am sure the controller would immediately terminate the practice call and give full attention to the mayday.

You ask for thoughts... On a recent visit to D and D, student pilots were positively encouraged to pratcise with PANs (if the frequency was clear)... I'm sure it helps both the student and the controller in keeping "up-to-speed". As dmdrewitt says: "I am sure the controller would immediately terminate the practice call and give full attention to the mayday."

Just my £0.02.

Bearcat

In addition to D & D themselves positively encouraging Practice Pans, the standard student pilot text on RT (Trevor Thom volume 7) also suggests this too:-

"You should make a practice call at some stage during your training; the experience will be valuable should you ever need to use the service in a real situation".

It then goes on to cover, in detail, exactly the points you raise about how to make sure you don't step on a real emergency. And in the JAR PPL exam you get tested on this.

Perhaps someone from D & D could tell us what the average numbers are for real and practice calls in a given day.

Obviously Bearcat received a RT licence with his birth-certifcate.!

Maybe bearcat was just trying to provoke all these replies..?

Perhaps Bearcat also thinks the TV schedules should be cleared of all educational programmes for more 'Police, camera, shoot-outs and crashes' programmes. Obviously nothing better to do than sit and wait for someone to declare an emergency for his/her goulish amusement.

guys and gals, I accept all your points and have no agenda on the matter. I just said I find over uk airspace 121.50 is always rattling on with practice pans hence it's very hard to the point of distraction of keeping a listening watch on the frequency. no other country in europe seems to have such a busy 121.50 with the practice pans....what would i know anyway trying to listen out on 121.50 and keep the show on the road!

Capt Bear

On Saturday morning we were on an arrival into CDG after a long haul flight, at 0600z when we heard what was going on on 121.5. We also heard a Continental flight talking to the pilot involved in the emergancy and the registration given was G-BIOM. After the Continental assistance, we heard Speedbird helping.The ATC declared that the pilot was IMC and not IFR rated. Also, OM declared that he only had 50 minutes of fuel remaining.The last we heard before landing was the French fighter jet asking OM to speed up as the fighter required a higher speed for safer flight.
I sure hope all is OK. I take my hat off to the French controllers and fellow professional pilots who rendered the utmost help in this case.
Good to know that there are so many professionals out there!

On the point about cluttering up 121.5, when I visited D&D 2 years ago, they made it very clear that they wished that pilots would use their services more and sooner.

They didn't want pilots to use them as a 'last resort' as it could make any assistance they could give more complex or at worst too late.

Hope it all ended well.

GBIOM is a 152 based at Biggin.

FD

The problem with the endless stream of 'practise pans' is that on busy short sectors I and lots of others I know don't listen out on 121.5. It is just another distraction. The students should be given another frequency to practise on.
Incidently the UK is the only country I don't listen out in.

But because we have a dedicated Distress & Diversion (D&D) service, based at West Drayton and staffed by military controllers using receiving equipment located around the country, then maybe it doesn't matter that commercial airliners in UK airspace don't listen in to the guard frequency as much as elsewhere. Maybe it is more important that this happens in remote locations (e.g. Australia, mid-Atlantic) and regions without a dedicated D&D service...

Aussie A, the current security situation makes it an SOP for most operators to monitor 121.5 as much as possible, even over the UK. It is a distraction to have to listen to practice PANs etc but on the other hand it is recognized that such practices are invaluable for students and D&D controllers alike. The UK is almost alone in using 121.5 for practice purposes and, I believe, has had to file a Difference with ICAO for this. It's a bit like using 999 for practice emergency telephone calls. The answer to satisfy both requirements is to have a practice emergency frequency, I think the UK military have got one on UHF so it's not an unknown concept.

(Flew G-BIOM in the 1980s myself but never went that far in it!)