Mayday Aircraft Asked to Hold

Getting asked to wait during a life or death Mayday is....

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[vinnym]

As an ARFF Firefighter (Airport Rescue & Fire Fighting) I can tell you a controllers main reason for asking for fuel load in a none low fuel emergency is for us. Our truck carry between 1500 and 3000 gallons of water. We can convert to foam via a foam concentrate we mix into the water. The more fuel you have the more foam we will need if your fuel tanks rupture. We use foam even in the absence of fire because it floats in the leaking fuel and keeps it from being able to ignite. Us knowing how much fuel is onboard gives us that heads up to calculate if we have enough resources. Hours of fuel does not tell us the actual volume because we don’t know the aircraft consumption rate. We have ti have it in pounds or gallons for our calculations. Food for thought for pilots who give it in hours.

[sirgryzli]

From the European ATC perspective I don't agree with what You said about fuel.
If we ask for "fuel on board", we want the kilograms or tonnes. The only purpose of that information is to pass it to the firefighters. Since it is you, who have the emergency, we don't need to know how long CAN You fly. We want to know how long you WANT to fly. If you need immediate return, you will get it. If you need 10 minutes for the checklist, you will get it. If you need 2 hour for fuel burning You will get it.

If we need to know how long you can fly there's an other word in phreseology: "endurance". "Report endurance" - the answer must be in minutes/hours. And we rarely would use that in an emergency. It happens in "weather situations. Or in our unit's case - with military traffic, which has diffrent fuel regulations. They come back to land with much lower endurance remaining than commercial planes.

[darby]

Kelsey - regards the "2.2 for 4" non-standard phraseology: even if you are flying strictly domestically there are other aircraft on the frequency that may be international flights. Those pilots might not understand, which eats into their situational awareness.

[-Master_Of_Disaster]

14:44 "That may not be procedure, but neither is hitting the mountain." 😂 My kind of humor.

[jeremiahbroughton]

Task saturation kills pilots. As a fellow long haul captain, this conversation needs to happen, in earnest much more often. Keep it coming brother.

[shawath]

I am an Emergency Physician who loves the channel. So many of the things you point out about communication, task load reduction, teamwork, safety all have direct correlations to the resuscitation bay in a medical emergency or trauma. Thanks for making your stories accessible to those of us with no aviation background!

[benoithudson]

From VASAviation’s videos I’ve learned that if pilots say fuel in pounds they get asked for time, and if they give it in time they get asked for pounds, and if they give it in both they get asked for it in pints.

[lours]

"The universal distress call Mayday was invented in 1923 by Frederick Stanley Mockford, chief radio officer at Croydon airport in London. The authorities had asked him to find a term to signal distress that would be easily understood by all pilots and ground staff in the event of an emergency. Mockford chose a phonetic transcription of the pronunciation of the French expression "m'aider" - ‘help me’ (a shortened version of "venez m'aider") which had been uttered by a French pilot in distress two years earlier and which was understood by the English operator as "Mayday". And Pan Pan is from the French 'Panne' (Breakdown)

[Jay]

Pilot and instructor at a US legacy airline here. If, in the sim during an emergency, my students ask for vectors-I’ll give them. But I have them consider asking for a hold. If I’m in an actual emergency and was going to do an immediate return, that’s exactly what I’m going to ask for. If I were in the situation in the video in my aircraft, we’d have many minutes of checklists to run (rev unlocked, shutdown, overweight). If I’m on vectors, the checklists are going to be constantly interrupted by ATC instructions (hdg changes, etc). Each one of those changes has to be input by the pilot flying and then verified by the pilot monitoring. The pilot flying also has to devote more attention to flight path management (where are we?)
If I get a hold, it takes 30 seconds (if that) to enter it in the FMS. Once I’m in the hold…I’m done. Now the PF has more available bandwidth to devote to helping the PM go through all these checklists and formulate a plan. When my students use the hold strategy, the whole emergency invariably goes far smoother.

[ColeDedhand]

"Mayday mayday mayday."
"Are you declaring an emergency?"
"Is this your first day as an ATC?"

[VanquishedAgain]

Kelsey recording this video after being kidnapped and held in an abandoned warehouse? Blink three times if you need us to send the A-Team

[krank]

I've just notice you have your 4th stripe on your Epaulets, congratulations Captain....

[janebryant]

We must appreciate that Kelsey left his nice hotel and brought all of his recording equipment and stood in an abandoned building just to tell us about this!

[philosofiza]

I was taught to give the critical numbers in an emergency. If fuel low give duration remaining so controllers know to expedite, if fuel is high give amount on board so fire teams know what they are dealing with.

[yankeealfa]

Captain\instructor here... In case of an emergency like this I prefer to proceed to a holding at the IAF. This means we have a safe and published area giving us time to go through our checklists without being interrupted by ATC. As soon as we are ready for the approach it is just a simple call to ATC. To me the danger of accepting delaying vectors is that the flight crew might lose their situational awareness and, when ready for the approach, first have to figure out where they are in relation to the airport/runway. Compliments btw for your interesting videos and very professional comments. I wish you a happy and healthy career sir!

[neilhoogendoorn]

In the mid 80s my father was flying alone for the DEA in the middle of the night on the way home from a mission when a piston ejected through the hood. He was told to stand by after declaring mayday multiple times until he eventually crash landed in a field. Never was able to communicate with tower. He survived but was knocked unconscious, seat belt caught so hard he had to get stitches in his chest. He was a legend!

[manlystan]

"You might have to let the engine burn, which isn't part of procedure...but neither is hitting the mountain"....LMAO you always unintentionally crack me up @74 Gear!

[BxCortez]

I have to give plenty of respect to pilots and Atc. You guys are like invisible warriors .. getting us all safe to our destinations

[quackers]

As a controller I always assumed holding wasn’t that hard to do for a pilot. Seems like a good idea to have them hold close to the field so they can be ready to come in when they’re ready. I think the majority of controllers that don’t have piloting experience think this way until we see stuff like this explaining it. My initial thought was that giving the hold instructions would’ve been easier because now they’re in one spot near the field and no longer expecting any more radio calls for more control instructions while they troubleshoot and configure.

I’ll keep this video in mind if I’m in the scenario in the future but truly I (and a lot of us) didn’t/don’t know how much workload it increases. As you said though the pilot should’ve said unable to his hold instructions if it increases the workload that much. Not all of us know how to fly a plane and how much goes into certain tasks and we just want to help lol

Ps. Super embarrassing that a pilot said mayday, mayday, mayday and the controller asked if he was declaring an emergency 🤦🏼‍♂️

[carlveilleux]

Most simulator scenarios at my airline have us do a hold after an engine failure on departure followed by a return to the airport. But hey, that's the sim... we understand the game and play along. In reality, I would certainly refuse any hold given, and request vectors.
When we changed from "declaring an emergency" to PAN-PAN-PAN I was like "how am I going to remember calling PAN in an emergency after years of training with "declaring an emergency"? Couple years later we had to shut down an engine at 1500ft after departure, and to my surprise I did call PAN-PAN-PAN !! I asked for 15-20 min vectors to get ourselves ready to come back SE, that's what we got no problem, ATC was super helpful. Once on final the controller asked us to "keep the speed up". My answer was "Negative". He immediately apologized and said "Speed at you discretion".