American Airways 2 Heavy flying into JFK May 4, 2010
Lot’s of audio availableon this but basically it boils down to this. The plane is cleared to land on runway 22L. Later they hear there are gusts up to 35 knots (note that plane can land in crosswinds up to 40 knots). The pilot doesn’t ask to land on a better runway (31R). He just states that if they don’t get 31R that he will declare an emergency. The ATC takes it under advisement and tells the pilot to fly the runway heading. Pilot says they are declaring an emergency (no “mayday” or “pan-pan”), tells ATC they are landing and to clear the way. You really have to hear the pilot’s tone in the linked audio. To me he sounds irritated he didn’t get his way and screw everyone else.
Pilots, is what the pilot did appropriate?
I can’t find what happened in the aftermath. What was the “emergency” (since the pilot never told ATC). Did anything happen to the pilot?
Sounds to me like the pilot’s emergency was that he didn’t think he could land in that crosswind. Sounds legit. I mean, it is absolutely up to the pilot to do what the pilot considers safe. This doesn’t sound like he just didn’t like the runway number. He knows what he can do and what might give him trouble.
Probably in combination with being low on fuel, so if an attempted crosswind landing went awry he didn’t have the fuel to abort the landing and go around.
The detailed article includes a link to further discussion on PPRuNe; I didn’t read it, but the summary on AVWeb claims that opinions there are “divided:”
I’m not a pilot, but AIUI, officially declaring an in-flight emergency results in a lot of pain-in-the-ass paperwork and follow-up, so it’s not something one would choose to do lightly.
Again sounds legit. For example if cleared to land, no emergency, if put in a hold, or told to go to another airport it’s now a low fuel emergency. Pilot was just communicating the situation, which his 3rd responsibility after aviate & navigate.
And one does not have to use mayday or pan pan, and can use ‘I’m declaring a emergency’, as long as the message is communicated.
I think this brief article was very good, and without reading on the incident further I’m inclined to come down on the side of the flight’s captain.
I’ve been in similar situations lots of times, and there are multiple factors at work. The manual may say 40 knots is the crosswind limit, sure. But the company rules may be more strict, the wind may be changing speed and direction rapidly, the runway may or may not be wet, and BOTH pilots need to agree on the course of action. And don’t forget, that 40 knot figure was determined by test pilots under somewhat controlled conditions. I may be a professional, but I’m not Bob Hoover.
ATC is indeed mostly concerned with flow, and with quickly changing conditions I can see how the pilots eventually felt boxed in and their safe options reduced.
As an aside, I’m getting fed up with comments like, “If you can’t land in 34 knots of wind, what are you doing out there?” Pilots are terrible about this. It’s an attitude I’m beginning to think of as Everyone Except Me Is An Idiot Syndrome.
Until it is you. Then you become one of those older, wiser pilots who managed to live through a bad situation and you tell others about it. Or if you die, other pilots may study the incident as a learning tool, but often still think of the people involved as idiots. Tom Wolfe wrote about this in The Right Stuff - the attitude was that when a pilot got killed it meant they didn’t REALLY have the right stuff. It won’t happen to you.
IANAP but requesting a different runway seems tolerable; declaring an emergency less so (especially since the controller seemed happy to help but pilot declared emergency anyway). If he was low on fuel, why not say so?
Perhaps the winds were shifting, and he was afraid that if delayed too long 22L would become the favorable runway instead of 31R! He would certainly look the fool if he then requested another runway change!
How much extra fuel do planes carry? Unless something unusual had happened earlier in the flight, wouldn’t he have plenty to circle the airport a few times?
From what I understand (and correct me if I’m wrong), they had not declared “min fuel”. That’s not an emergency, but it does tell ATC that you can’t have further delays before landing.
But… Asking to land on a runway that’s not in use at an airport like JFK is sort of a big deal. They land an aircraft every minute or so at major airports, so a request like that is a major disruption to the traffic flow. Even if it’s granted, it would likely result in a significant delay.
Again, I’ve been in this situation and it can get fraught. What you see as the safest option as a pilot may not be what ATC wants you to do. There’s a lot of pressure to go along with the flow. But we pilots also understand that we are the “final authority” as to the safety of the flight. This captain exercised that authority. If he had landed on a runway with a gusty crosswind and something had gone wrong, we would have been asking why didn’t he choose to do something else.
On the one hand, if the pilot’s assessment of his own skill level was that he was genuinely not competent to handle the 34-knot-crosswind, then it was the correct call, in the moment, for him to refuse to use that runway.
On the other hand, if that’s the pilot’s assessment of his skill level, then it would be perfectly reasonable for the airline he works for to decide that he’s insufficiently skilled to hold the job.
Not a pilot, but if I understand correctly it’s enough to fly to their alternate airport + an additional 20 minutes of flying + more at the captain’s discretion (like the captain anticipates a long hold or something). Correct me if I’m wrong, but “min fuel” means “any further delay will cause us to eat into that 20 minute buffer”, right?
This is a terrible way of looking at risk assessment. Aviation history is full of accidents in which a pilot chose to do something they felt they were up to, and something went wrong.
On another day, maybe that same pilot would have done it safely. On the same day, maybe another pilot could have pulled it off. But when we get into, “You couldn’t get it done? OK, you’re fired.” it creates a terribly perverse incentive to take risks. And when you push risks, bad things eventually happen.
The reality is, at good companies, the opposite holds true. A pilot decides the conditions aren’t safe and goes to an alternate. This costs money, screws up schedules and guess what? The company says “good job”. Or a pilot wakes up after a bad night’s sleep and calls in fatigued - a guy at my company was singled out for praise despite this creating logistical problems. Pilots are very mission oriented. We want to complete flights and get the job done. We definitely don’t need to further incentivize taking chances. If anything, we need the opposite.
I hold something like ten pilot licenses, depending on how you count. I have four type ratings and thousands of hours in all kinds of props and jets. With that experience, if anything I’ve become more careful about risk. And I respect a pilot who can put aside the ego and make a safer decision, especially when people play the “I thought you were a professional” card.
But it’s more than the pilot not wanting to land on the given runway because of crosswinds. It’s going immediately into an emergency, telling ATC they are landing on the wanted runway immediately and clear the way.
From what I read, the crew didn’t feel their request was being given much priority. Again, I’ve been in this situation myself and it can be vexing. The pilot exercised his authority, and (not insignificantly) it landed safely. If it turns out that this captain has a history of dialing things up to 11 with little provocation, then that might change my opinion.
When I get to talking about things like this I ask myself if I’m just being loyal to my tribe as a pilot. But I have to say, we seem to have the opposite inclination from the police - pilots are very quick to throw each other under the bus for even minor mistakes. That’s good to a point for safety, and I prefer it to the alternative. But I cringe reading some of the pilot message boards. We can be very unkind to our colleagues, worse than the general public even, when it comes to Monday morning quater-backing.
So I really think that this captain erred on the side of caution, which is sometimes the correct thing to do. He said damn the paperwork, we’re landing this jet. He may very well have been right to do it.
a 34 knot crosswind is a substantial crosswind. The reason for runways at different angles is to avoid endangering aircraft and passengers. There are a lot of aircraft that can’t handle much of a crosswind because of the risk of striking an engine cowl. It’s not a function of leaning into the wind, a pilot in heavy crosswinds is subject to a lot of variation that create a lot of left/right wing rocking to maintain control. I know carriers that restrict their pilots to 15 knot crosswinds because of this. It’s up to the crew to force the issue if a tower is slow to change runway patterns. Here’s a video to give you an example.
There are cheats you can do in a little plane that you can’t do it in a passenger plane. So you’re stuck with a standard approach profile.
And to throw some numbers around the 2 runways are 90 degrees to each other. In this example winds are 320 heading 23 knots gusting to 35. The crosswind component for runway 22 is 33.48 knots and for runway 31 it’s 5.9 knots. It’s a huge difference.
with 2 sets of parallel runways it’s odd they didn’t use 31L/31R. I’d guess 31R was closed at the time which cut approaches in half but that’s a guess. If both 31L/31R were functional then the tower should have transitioned the pattern to them.
In situations like this, it may be wise to ask: “If I go with option A and am wrong, what can happen? If I go with option B and am wrong, what can happen?” Here, we have a plane crash vs messing up the flow.
Do you want to err on the side of emergencies being called a notch too often or a notch not often enough?
As for the plane being rated to 40 knots: Maximum recommended =/= wise in all situations. I imagine there are many factors which could, in specific circumstances, make it preferable not to push parameters to their max. Have you ever been on a road that allowed 60mph but decided to drive slower than that? Or loaded something with less weight than it was rated for?
ETA: It might sound like I’m disagreeing with you. Very much not.