Mayday Mayday...

[gordon-in-aberdeen]

Here folks, the Beeb have posted the ATC chatter of the 777 prang at Heathrow on their news website: -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8505174.stm

Interesting listening to the pro's handling a major panic like they do...

[DelP]

Instant response and all that, they are trained for these situations so I suppose as long as the message gets across and the situation is dealt with efficiently and safely......

...did he really say 'Thanks chap..'

I hate that........

Derek

[speedbird591]

There was a link to this posted a while back with an accompanying video of the ATC radar of Heathrow, but that's now been withdrawn unfortunately. Whilst all the people involved acted professionally, there were some minor mistakes made under the pressure of the moment. And this isn't a criticism, just an observation. It's comforting to know that when faced with such a situation, and with however much training, these guys are human after all. After correctly acknowledging the callsign as Speedbird 38 on finals, the pilot then forgot the flight number when calling Mayday and incorrectly called 95. If Speedbird 95 was also in the area it could have caused confusion but the controller seemed to know which flight it was. Also the Captain pressed the transmit button instead of the PA and called for an evacuation to ATC instead of the passengers. The controller corrected him instantly and the a/c was evacuated very quickly anyway. I imagine the cabin crew had already commenced it as they are trained to initiate it in clearly catastrophic circumstances.

Ian