The business of any particular situation being an 'automatic mayday' or whatever, in both ATC and on the flightdeck, is a result of what might be called corporate nervousness. We are moving toward an environment where everything has a procedure - if the procedure is followed then all is OK (almost irrespective of the outcome).

In the old days we trained professionals with skills to assess a situation and to make appropriate decisions - admittedly the outcome wasn't always ideal but that's life. Nowdays there is so much pressure to shorten training that we are training people what to if X or Y or Z happens rather than giving them professional skills to understand what is happening and deal with it. But at least it doesn't take so long to train them.

In years gone by I recall being faced with a beautiful summer's day, a gentle warm breeze along the runway, and the pilot of a twin-engined aircraft reporting, "just for my information really, a precautionary engine shutdown as it joined the visual circuit downwind. I put a local standby on. No drama.

A rather different situation to another that I recall on a stormy night with a wet runway and stonking crosswind and a hint in the pilot's voice that he was working hard. That one got a full emergency.

Either way I was poised to assess any further information that came to light and upgrade the category of emergency (and corresponding actions that were taken on the airfield and elsewhere) if I believed it was necessary. I always thought that was one of the things I was paid for.

Today I don't have the ability to make such choices. 50% or more power loss and I have to put on a full emergency. I guess that's progress.

Oil starved bearings are very unlikely to lead to a severe engine damage at idle.

Oil pressure needs oil quantity, a properly sealed system and a working pump. Oil temperature needs a proper balance between internal friction and the oil cooling. I agree that too little oil is likely to affect the temperature It is readily corrected by reducing the RPM (friction) to idle. All are appropriate thoughts for a single flight. However be aware that continued faults over multiple flights may be an indicator of the oil seals allowing hot air into a bearing compartment and should be treated as likely to lead to an internal oil fire which can be very serious.

Agree totally. By 'cooked' I mean more than two parameters exceeding operating limits. If by idling the engine these values are exceeded then I would most probably shut it down.

On a slightly different note, does anyone think that crews sometimes act in a manner that they believe they are 'protecting' themselves and their licences but end up creating a riskier situation than they previusly had? You know, trying so hard to comply with all the rules, regs and SOP that theyvactually miss the woods for the trees.

With regard to mayday/pan, is there a difference in the extent that external local emergency services are alerted by ATC eg fire service, A&E departments?

In the UK, yes, the category of emergency declared by the controller will affect the response outside the airport. But it varies between different airports depending on the type of operations that go on. For an airport with commercial operations the most significant difference is likely to be that if a full emergency is declared a significant number of ambulances wioll be dispatched to the airport and A&E departments may stop accepting patients and wards may be cleared. Unfortunately the scale of response is nat always scaled to the size of the aircraft so a BN3 may get the same response as a B767.

This is the downside of going for a mayday because it can always be downgraded. And there is at least one instance where a fire vehicle killed a pedestrian (or someone waiting at a bus stop, I think) whilst on its way to the airport for a minor event.

- did you read posts #13, 24 and 26?:ugh:

The Kestrel Ops Manual states that if an engine is shut down then the crew are to declare a MAYDAY.

Ref "Mayday" ....
As a Manch Tower ATSA, I have personally been invoved in three + 1..
A321, on departure "Smoke in the cockpit"...Masks ON....Circuit, and Land
Emergency svcs alerted ASAP
Dash8, Engine fail on T/O...Clear the circuit [Virgin B747 broken off apr...amongst others]
DC3 overflight...double engine fail at FL090...glide apr
C172, lost in snow...landed on R/w 28 at Manch, Xwind, and "dinged" a wingtip...and a proptip :mad: cost about £3K...crew OK :ok:
ALL ended Safely
ALL were {almost} routine. WE [both Aircrew and ATC] are trained to handle these problems.........Sooo....
If the PIC calls Mayday, or Pan, His call..our job is to help him/her FULL STOP.

I've heard that a few countries don't understand the meaning of "PAN" therefore... Guess what i'll be saying if I have an engine quit on my twin engine aeroplane.

So if I am in a light twin and advise ATC that I am executing a practice landing with one engine feathered, I call Mayday and transponder to 7700 - right? After all, I am on one engine...

Or do I say "Practice Mayday and sqawk 7700? After all, if the live engine quits on final I won't have time to attempt a restart of the previously feathered engine.

remoak talks sense.

A precautionary shutdown, unless accompanied with further nasty problems, does not place the aircraft in a "condition of being threatened by serious and/or imminent danger." Perhaps in this case the commander was aware of some catastrophic hydraulic / fuel leak or fire etc of which we are unaware?

In the three in-flight precautionary shutdowns in two engined aeroplanes I have made, I have declared a PAN because the situation warranted what was effectively the definition of PAN. MATS states ATC should consider 50% of remaining power units to be a full emergency. This definition does not exist in any pilot publication I have ever read so the perspective is not uniformly shared.

In the event of an unexpected failure, I would almost certainly use Mayday since there may be underlying, further unknown damage that puts me in a "condition of being threatened by serious and/or imminent danger."

The definition of both terms are published widely as remoak describes. I've never understood why some try to create their own definitions or assumptions of their meaning.

As an aside, I would always use Mayday when on one remaining power unit outwith the UK, simply because PAN is not often recognised there and there is no definitive alternative I have ever found.

As another poster mentioned, the Kestrel pilots have it easy in this regard. They have a printed SOP that demands they use Mayday. Here lies the Captain's privilege.

Silent Jumpseater -

I have not seen that written in any Boeing manual. Can you give me a reference? Are you perhaps confusing it with the requirement to "land immediately." That is not the same as putting out a Mayday.........

You should not be in control of any a/c if you practice landings in a light twin with one engine feathered full stop

A37575

There is no such thing as practice Mayday.

Have to agree with Wellington Bomber. That practice has killed too many people.

Well thanks everyone!
As usual the thread has drifted a little.
AVMAN's cynicism is unfounded I'm afraid as my access to the internet here is ..err.. variable to say the least. Hence the delay.
As for the reason for the MAYDAY then it could have many things not least of all an incapacitated fellow aviator and my concern was genuine for all concerned.
Can I just finish by saying that I have been aware of other MAYDAY flights coming into control zones in the past but this was the first time I had a chance to listen to a large amount of the service provided by ATC and I'd just like to say that I thought it was first class. Heaven forbid that I ever have to declare but if I do I can at least rest assured that the service I get from the ground will be top notch.

airbus.skydriver has the definitive answer - you do what it says in your company's Ops Manual.

Then you go to the pub and reward yourself a beer whilst the management deal with the aftermath.

....not totally definitive however!

One can only do what is printed in the company Ops manual if it is printed there in the first place! None of the companies I have worked for provided company SOP for the radiotelephony use of PAN or Mayday. The pilot must therefore revert to ICAO / EU Ops standard and the definitions therein.

Whether using a company ops manual or not, standard rt is required from the rt manual and not operator specific. Otherwise that would confuse the heck out of everyone. Within the rt manual there is latitude to apply company policy though. Our company policy also allows an amount of discretion on the captains part.

I would not expect critisism for declaring a mayday for an engine failure (given that this is something we regularly do in the sim!). I would expect critisism for NOT declaring an emergency though.

Returning
 

From a subwatch to its Greenland base, Captain finds himself 0/0 flying up the last of several fjords he's tried. Co-pilot asks, "This the one?" Capt. replies "definitely". "how can you be so sure?" "It has to be, we're outta gas." Mayday?

There is a very simple answer to all of this. Don't fly for a company who only have aeroplanes with two engines!

I managed that for 46 years and never flew a commercial twin.

Therefore an engine failure was but a mere annoyance and a Pan would suffice on most occasions.

However, had I been put in the unfortunate position of having to make do with just two engines, I think a Mayday would at least have been on my horizon if one of them failed.

(Come to think of it, just getting airborne on two engines might have been getting close to an emergency!)

In my last company the SOPs called for a Pan with the loss of one engine and a Mayday with the loss of two engines.