There is a third hand. The pilot would normally have been happy with the strong crosswind but assessed that they didn’t have enough fuel to do a go-around and fly another full approach, therefore they wanted to land on the runway that presented the least risk of a go-around.
The airline pays the pilots to assess risk and make decisions that minimise the chance of the airline making the headlines.
People have mentioned priority and I think that’s important to consider. This was not the only flight taking off and landing. By declaring an emergency, the pilot was saying his plane was in a unique situation and his landing had to be given priority over other planes.
So the question is whether the pilot had a legitimate reason - like being low on fuel - for feeling his situation was more critical than other flights. Or did he just feel like he deserved special treatment?
I think the jury is still out in this case if there actually was an emergency or if it was a case of the pilot knowing the the magic words would get him what he wanted.
And that is part of the original question. At what point (and to whom) does the pilot have to answer the question, “What was the emergency?” And if he says something “low fuel” is any investigation done?
Declaring an emergency is a big deal and there would be an investigation. The thing is though, the investigation might just be an internal one done by the company’s safety department and Joe Public like us here in this thread will never get to read it. Which is how it should be, because it’s not really any of our business.
The pilot in the OP, whatever his situation, didn’t communicate very well.
I don’t remember any plumber becoming famous for his heroic decisive actions. Or even a heroic dentist for that matter. It is understandable that airliner pilots have a special status.
This discussion reminds me of the time Tom Hanks was second-guessed after his famous water landing.
There’s a 4th hand. unless 31R was closed then the tower should have switched the pattern to 31L/31R. The pilot in question might have been forcing the issue with low fuel and alternate airport weather to back up the decision. If that were the case he did the whole pattern a service.
I for one don’t want to be a passenger on a commercial flight with 34 knot gusting crosswinds.
Obviously I respect your opinion and I certainly defer to your view of what are appropriate actions for a pilot, but I very much disagree that an airline’s investigation of a declared emergency isn’t any of the public’s business. Anything that bears on the competence of an airline’s pilots, its fuel policies, etc., is my business as a member of the air-traveling public.
Except the safety of the flying public kind of is the business of the FAA, at least in the US. Do they really not review all declared aviation emergencies?
He didn’t articulate his reasons very well, but at 0:40 he did explicitly declare an emergency. Not sure why ATC continued to behave so casually after that.
Agreed! Lord, if I’m a passenger, I don’t want my pilot taking he risks because he’s afraid he will lose his job if he doesn’t. I’m totally on the side of the pilot in this because he was exercising judgment based on experience.
35 knots is very close to 40. Gusting winds can be very unpredictable. There could have been a 40+ gust just as he was landing.
Here are slides from a NASA presentation: “Declaring an Emergency — Fact and Fiction.” (Doubtless the presentation was accompanied by verbal comments missing from the slides, which therefore end up confusing.) For example:
Some people have pointed out the movie needed a villain so the investigators were deliberately made more antagonistic than they were in real life.
You keep talking about the pilot “getting what he wanted” like he was throwing a snit because he got strawberry instead of chocolate, or something.
As a passenger on a plane I want the pilot to get exactly what he wants.
This is the $64,000 question. With crosswinds 3/4 of absolute maximmum and a perfectly good runway almost at the right heading - why wouldn’t the ATC switch? Had weather changed that quickly? Was it too disruptive to realign later take-offs and landings?
So many of the safety bulletins I used to get about airplane crashes started with engine failure after take-off, but became far more serious because the pilot stalled as they tried to “stretch” out the landing to reach a destination beyond gliding distance - or worse yet they tried to turn to an unreachable destination and ended up stall-spin into the ground. I only took private pilot, but they emphasized during take off engine failure “don’t try to turn back, find a spot ahead that you can land without hitting a n obstacle.”
I trust pilots at least as much as any other professionals, and more than most. They are not just reponsible for their passengers’ lives, but their own. I want them to be as risk averse as possible.
The mode of operation for an airport often has little to do with minimising risk to the aircraft and more to do with noise abatement, fitting in with other neighbouring airports, and maximising the number of movements. It is also very disruptive changing the pattern so the existing mode may continue for quite some time before it is changed.
How would you feel if you were a passenger on one of the other planes whose landings were delayed?
while this is true we’re talking about a specific airport. 31L/31R are the longer set of runways at JFK so I’d assume they are meant to be the main runways for the average wind conditions.
I just listened to ATIS and that didn’t help. the winds favor 22 and that’s what they’re using.
You’re the airline pilot, do you have any input on JFK?
It sounded like ATC was trying to get him into a pattern but the pilot was I called an emergency and I’m landing right now. Everyone else needs to get the fuck out of my way.
Because that is exactly how he sounded to me. You give me what I want or I’ll declare an emergency and get it anyways.
As for your second point, assuming you are anyone but a passenger on that plane, do you want the pilot to do what he wants everyone else be damned?
But the the question still remains, was there an authentic emergency so risky that the plane couldn’t be put in a pattern to land on the pilot’s preferred runway. That seems to be the missing point in a lot of this discussion. Assuming the ATC’s direction to fly runway heading was an effort to put him on 31R (and 31L was closed at the time) was the situation at the time that he had to land RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!
And since he declared an emergency, who debriefs him? It seems the FAA doesn’t. Seems like the system is open to abuse and this might be one of those cases. The fact is we don’t know if there was a real emergency or not.
IMHO, It is broadly your business (and mine), in that you have a government agency that regulates the airlines and ensures that the airlines follow a certain process with regards to incident reporting, but the fine details of every little incident is not your business (or mine).
The fact that it was a “declared emergency” is possibly less of a big deal than you are thinking. I don’t know the FAA rules but ICAO guidance is that if you will land with your fuel reserves in tact (30 minutes generally), but any delay from ATC would mean that you may land with less than your minimum reserves you declare “min fuel”. This is just to let ATC know your fuel situation but it does not guarantee or require any priority from them. If you subsequently calculate you will land with less than minimum reserves then you declare “Mayday Fuel”, now you have an emergency and can expect priority treatment.
Let’s look at what this can mean in the real world though. Say your reserve fuel is calculated at 2000 kg per hour, so 30 minutes is 1000 kg. You are on approach and will land with 1500 kg. This is well above your 1000 kg reserve and is not a problem at all. However you also know that if you do a go-around and have to be slotted back into the arrivals queue, you will probably burn another 1000 kg of fuel (flying a go-around burns fuel at a much higher rate than 2000 kg per hour). The position you’re in is that if the approach and landing goes well, it’s just another day in the office, but if you have to go-around you are immediately in a potential low-fuel situation.
I don’t know what happened to AAL2 but hypothetically say they were in the position described above and then they are told about the wind. Now they want a different runway but they can’t accept the full runaround from ATC, so they make the call, declare an emergency and position visually for a landing on the other runway. Then they land. Fuel in the tanks is 1300 kg, still more than minimum reserve. So in this hypothetical, they had a situation genuinely requiring an emergency call, but having made that call they landed with more fuel than what would require an emergency. Clear as mud?
The upshot of this can be a very mundane report to the safety department that no one in the world would’ve been interested in reading except that it happened to have an interesting YouTube video associated with it.
This might be a bit broad for the thread, but if go-arounds are foreseeable and normal reserves aren’t enough to comfortably complete them, shouldn’t the reserve be higher?