What is an emergency landing and what makes a pilot tell the air traffic controller that the flight has developed a major snag and will go in for an emergency landing?
All pilots have to follow a set of laid down parameters when flying a plane. If at any stage during a flight a pilot feels that all the parameters are not as they should be, he declares an emergency landing. All pilots are taught to handle an emergency situation not only as a part of their initial training but this also forms a part of the simulator training that pilots go through regularly.
A cross section of pilots that BusinessLine spoke to said there were two types of calls that a pilot can make — Pan-Pan and May Day. Of these, May Day is an emergency while Pan-Pan is an urgency call. Says a pilot, “Since it is advisable to land the aircraft and get the issue checked, a pilot will either look to land immediately if it is a May Day call, or in case of a Pan-Pan call he will look to land the aircraft at a suitable airport which means that the airline might have its own technical staff stationed there to look into the problem.”
Adds another pilot, “A May Day call can be downgraded to Pan-Pan if the various procedures that pilots are taught during training help in bringing the emergency under control.”
The good news is that all pilots maintain that in almost 99.9 per cent of emergencies the aircraft is still flyable. This is also borne out by the fact that aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus certify that their aircraft are Extended Twin Engines Operations capable, meaning that a two-engine aircraft is capable of remaining airborne for about two hours even if one of the engines fail.
22/09/15 Ashwini Phadnis/Business Line
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All pilots have to follow a set of laid down parameters when flying a plane. If at any stage during a flight a pilot feels that all the parameters are not as they should be, he declares an emergency landing. All pilots are taught to handle an emergency situation not only as a part of their initial training but this also forms a part of the simulator training that pilots go through regularly.
A cross section of pilots that BusinessLine spoke to said there were two types of calls that a pilot can make — Pan-Pan and May Day. Of these, May Day is an emergency while Pan-Pan is an urgency call. Says a pilot, “Since it is advisable to land the aircraft and get the issue checked, a pilot will either look to land immediately if it is a May Day call, or in case of a Pan-Pan call he will look to land the aircraft at a suitable airport which means that the airline might have its own technical staff stationed there to look into the problem.”
Adds another pilot, “A May Day call can be downgraded to Pan-Pan if the various procedures that pilots are taught during training help in bringing the emergency under control.”
The good news is that all pilots maintain that in almost 99.9 per cent of emergencies the aircraft is still flyable. This is also borne out by the fact that aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus certify that their aircraft are Extended Twin Engines Operations capable, meaning that a two-engine aircraft is capable of remaining airborne for about two hours even if one of the engines fail.
22/09/15 Ashwini Phadnis/Business Line
