Originally Posted by
sbrower
Can you point me to an example of a recording of a commercial plane which intentionally deviated from assigned altitude because of an emergency and, while having radio communications intact, did not state that they were declaring an emergency? Or are you just saying that because the pilot handled a very difficult situation very well the fact that it was 1 flight in 100 for not making that declaration didn't matter in YOUR opinion, which doesn't change my opinion that being 1 in 100 shows some level of stress induced unusual communication (i.e. - a 1 in 100 exception). But I would certainly be interested in hearing your views if you would actually provide some information, like I did.
I listened to and posted the raw ATC feed from ZNY Sector 10 (NY Center), the frequency they were on when the incident occurred. They didn't audibly declare an emergency. That being said the words "we declare an emergency" are actually not standard phraseology and not used elsewhere in the world. Equally the declaration of Mayday or Pan-Pan are not used in the US. The United States for some reason doesn't use standard ICAO phraseology which has actually led to incidents or near-incidents over time. For instance there's a recording of an SAA A340 out of JFK on YouTube that had a flap malfunction I think, and the pilots used the correct ICAO phraseology of Pan-Pan and the controller didn't understand it and continuously repeated "are you declaring an emergency?"
In fact if you listen to ATC from US airports it's sometimes shocking how they communicate when compared to, for instance, London or Hong Kong. HKG ATC is incredibly crisp and well enunciated (see YouTube video of China Eastern (I think Eastern) with terrain alert at HKG).
Many standard phraseology rules are for instance that a question should be ended with "confirm?", And rather than yes one should say "affirm" not "affirmative" which could be confused with negative if the first part is cut off or misunderstood.
Another one is that when lining up on a runway behind a landing aircraft, after confirming the aircraft on final being in sight the tower would say "after the landing A320, runway 12, line up and wait, behind". This is probably one of the most critical and often overlooked rules which is that a line up clearance behind a landing or taking off aircraft ALWAYS ends with the word "behind" and must be read back exactly like that. If the readback doesn't end with "behind" the tower will repeat it again for the pilot to read back once more, as obviously lining up in front of a landing aircraft is one of the worst things that could happen.
In terms of ICAO phraseology the correct procedure in this incident would've been;
"Mayday, mayday, mayday, Southwest 1380 has an engine fire, in a rapid descent, request vectors to nearest airfield for immediate landing"
- keyword mayday repeated three times indicates a life threatening emergency requiring highest priority from ATC
- callsign, who has the emergency
- what happened
- what are they doing
- what do they need
A vector is a magnetic heading, e.g. 250 degrees as initially assigned after the incident, not a point so there's no such thing as a "nearest vector". Vectoring refers to the assignment of a magnetic heading to an aircraft in IFR.