Air traffic control
versus pilots. We're unable. We may
end up in the Hudson. Coming up! Hey, 74 crew! Welcome back! If you don't know me,
my name is Kelsey. I'm a 747 pilot. My channel 74 gear
is all about aviation. If you're into aviation, all you know
about the miracle in the Hudson. Even if you're not into aviation,
you'll know about that story. Well, Cactus 1549
or US Airways 1549, the interaction between the pilots and
Air traffic control goes pretty quickly. So I decided to put that in this
Air traffic control versus pilot series and of course, I have some
funny ones in here as well. Let's get into it! Cactus 1549, turn
left heading 2-7-0. This, Cactus 1549. Hit
birds we lost thrust in both engines. We're turning
back towards LaGuardia. Okay, yeah, you need to return to
LaGuardia. Turn left heading of 2-2-0. 220. Tower, stop your departures.
We got an emergency returning. Who is it? It's 1529, he, bird strike.
He lost all engines. He lost the thrust in the engines.
He is returning immediately. Cactus 1529, which engine He lost thrust in
both engines, he said Got it. Cactus 1529, if we can get it to you,
do you want to try to land runway 13 We're unable. We may
end up in the Hudson. Alright Cactus 1549, It's going
to be a left traffic to runway 31 Unable Ok, what do you need to land Cactus 1549, runway 4 is available if
you want to make left traffic to runway 4. I am not sure if we can make any
runway. Oh, what's that over to our right? Ok, yeah, off to your
right is Teterboro airport. Do you want to try
and go to Teterboro? Yes. Teterboro Empire actually LaGuardia
departure got an emergency inbound. Okay, go ahead. Cactus 1549, Over the George Washington
bridge want to go to the airport right now He wants to go to our airport
check. Does he need any assistance? Ah, yes he, was a bird strike.
Can I get him in for runway 1? Runway 1, that's good Cactus 1549, turn right 280, you
can land runway 1 at Teterboro We can't do it Okay, which runway
would you like at Teterboro We're gonna be in the Hudson I'm sorry, say again, Cactus Jetlink 2760 contact
New York 126.8 126.8 JetLink 2760 Cactus 1549 radar contact
is lost. You also got Newark airport off your 2 o'clock
and about seven miles Man, that still gives me
chills when I hear that. I never want to
be in that situation. The pilot that you
hear talking is Sully. Obviously, you know who that is. Sully is doing something that we get
taught very, very early in flight school which is how to handle
something in this situation. Which is to aviate, then
navigate and then communicate. And in that order. That's the order priority that you
need to have in any situation like this. Aviate obviously, you
need to fly the plane. If you're not flying the plane,
you're going to get in a lot of trouble. Then navigate,
where are you going? He chooses to land in the Hudson
but he's looking for other options. He's looking at what other possibilities
they can do and then communicate. He's communicating in a
very short and effective way to get Air traffic control the
information that they need to help them the
most they possibly can. Aviate, navigate, communicate is something
that's important always when you're flying. But in an emergency
situation, it becomes very important that
it goes in that priority. There have been cases where the
pilots are too busy communicating. They forget to actually
fly the plane and then they get themselves
into a lot of trouble. So they're putting the priorities here
aviate then navigate and communicate. It's something that all pilots
know and it's something that you need to keep in
mind in a situation like this. You might go into the wrong
airspace or something like that but if you can safely land the plane,
it's easier to fill out some paperwork than if you crash and you're talking
the whole way you're going down. So he's giving Air traffic
control the information that they need to give
him what he needs. Which is where else can I go. And he's making those Air
traffic controllers work for him. The other thing that's really
worth noting here and I don't think the Air traffic controllers
get a lot of credit for this is how fast that controller
that was handling, that was working with
Sully and that crew, how fast he was working as far as
finding options, calling other airports, getting everything set up. He was giving Sully every possible
option while he was talking with him where he could go,
headings, everything. And you can hear in his voice
when they lose radar contact, I'm sure the pit of his
stomach must have felt horrible. Cactus 1549 radar contact
is lost. You also got Newark airport off your 2 o'clock
and about seven miles Radar contact,
obviously means that the plane can no longer
be detected by the radar which means it's so low to the
ground that the radar can't pick him up. Air traffic controls' radar, obviously,
it's directed up towards the sky So there's usually a lowest altitude
that you're going to be able to be seen. Obviously, he'd gone below that
because he was landing in the Hudson. But when you lose a plane like that,
you know there's going to be a problem. So even though all the information
that the controller was giving and all the calls that he was making
ended up being not useful at all. You can see behind the
scenes if you give them the information that you
need in a real emergency, how fast and how much they will
do to give you anything that you need to help safely get you
on the ground again. So while in this series we do
see pilots and Air traffic control getting at each other and
kind of nitpicking at each other and sometimes they're fighting
about different things that does happen and sometimes the controllers are
wrong and sometimes the pilots are wrong. But the reality is that we're all in the
same team when we're up there flying. And those controllers
will do anything for you if you give them the
information that they need in order to be able to help you. So he's let them know he lost an engine, where he's at,
where is he going. And he's asking for options and he's
making that controller work for them. I was talking with a guy who
used to fly single pilot all the time. He got jammed up in a really bad
situation when he was flying by himself, and what he did is he
made Air traffic control get him all the
frequencies that he needed and really put that guy to work to
help get him on the ground safely. And those controllers
will do it for you. They will make you a priority. They will clear everything out
when you declare an emergency. Those controllers will do everything
to help you get on the ground. You're gonna have to
fill out some paperwork but it doesn't matter
in that scenario. So I thought it was
important to acknowledge these controllers here
because how much they did. Even though what they gave
him didn't change the outcome. This shows you what they'll do for
you when you give them a chance. Now, in this next video, you're
going to see a different side of that. That if I was a pilot, I would be very
annoyed dealing with this controller. Listen up. 509UP we need to
level off here at 2000 9UP for the minimum
vectoring altitude 2600 approved 9UP 509UP declaring an emergency N9UP Norcal approach
how do you hear? 9UP Norcal approach reply unreceived
if you hear me ident maintain 3000 Can't hear him 509UP declaring an emergency
need to return to the field immediately 9UP Norcal approach understand
you are declaring an emergency are you able to maintain your own
terrain and obstruction clearance negative. Give us vectors
a door flew off the aircraft. 9UP climb maintain 2600 2600 UP 9UP fly heading of 260 260 UP N9UP report level 2600 UP we're having a hard time
climbing. Could you just send us back? Roger, sir. I just have to the climb
to the minimum vectoring altitude. Unless you can maintain your own
terrain and obstruction clearance. Well, there's clouds around now and so
we're trying to climb. It's not doing well. 9UP turn left heading of 100
vectors to final approach course Left turn 100 UP
we're not climbing. N9UP are you able to maintain your
own terrain obstruction clearance? So at the beginning, when the
pilot declares his emergency, they're both talking on each other.
We call it stepping on each other. But they can't hear what
the other person is saying. Only pilots that are
externally or people that were listening to the frequency
would be able to hear. But they're talking
on top of each other. 509UP declaring an emergency What typically
happens in that scenario when both transmissions start and
end at the back very exact same time, which is very rare. Somebody will quickly
key up and say: "Blocked". But nobody did
that in this scenario. So if you heard that,
you had two options. Either let it play
out like it did, or you could have one of the
pilots that was listening to it and say: "Ma'am, he's declaring
an emergency". At that point, they're going to start
communicating and getting into a sequence like you heard
later on in the video. Things are changing
a little bit in the aviation with regards to
declaring an emergency. Now, they want you to
say Mayday or Pan-pan so you need to understand the
difference between those two. Your Mayday is going to
be, this is life-threatening. This is something that you need immediate situation
or need help to get onto the ground because
it's life-threatening. A Pan-pan is like, you need attention
but you're not going to die over it. So there's two different
ways to say I need some help and it kind of lets the
Air traffic controllers know just how much
attention they need to give you. Versus declaring an emergency
was kind of the blanket statement which something has gone wrong but they
don't know the level of your emergency. Sully would be a Mayday. In my case, if I lost one of the engines
on my plane, it would be a Pan-pan. Or maybe not even that. So you have to differentiate
the level of emergencies as a pilot so that way the Air
traffic control knows how much attention
they need to give you. When they both started talking to
each other and then he didn't reply because he was
busy flying the plane, she said: "I didn't listen". 9UP Norcal approach reply unreceived
if you hear me ident maintain 3000. For those of you who aren't
pilots, the ident in that scenario, sometimes what you
have is you as a pilot have the inability
to transmit back. You can hear Air traffic
control but they can't hear you. So in some cases, Air traffic control
will say ident or acknowledge to ident. And that lets you know
if you hit that button, that they can transmit to you you can hear what they're saying
so they can give you instructions but that you're not
going to be talking back. And what that does is put a
blip on their screen saying: "Okay, he hears
what I'm saying". So that's what that ident meant. The controller keeps
asking for the pilot to maintain terrain and
obstruction clearance because he can't
get high enough. Roger, sir. I just have to the climb
to the minimum vectoring altitude unless you can maintain your own
terrain and obstruction clearance This is a legal thing. It's my
understanding would be that he can't get high
enough so that way he avoids everything
that's on the ground there but he can't climb because
his door is hanging open. And that's not really the
time to start adding a bunch of power and changing your
configuration to go up more unless you're definitely going to hit a
mountain, at that point you have to do it. But she keeps saying:
"Are you going to maintain your own terrain and
obstruction clearance?" But he's saying: "I'm in
the clouds, I can't do that". Now, San Francisco got
some mountains and it's got some tall buildings
and it's got some things, but it's also next to the water. So at 2000 feet, she could
vector him and keep him out of that but she is trying to avoid
taking on the legal responsibility and she's trying to
pass that on to him by saying: "Can you maintain your
own terrain and obstruction clearance?" Which I think, personally, would really
irritate me if I was in that situation. I know that's going
to be controversial and I know there's going to be controllers
and pilots they're going to say: "No, she was right to say
those things, and that's fine". This is just my opinion
if I was in this scenario. I would want her to be
helping me and telling me: Hey, fly this heading or keep me in the
bay or have me do circles or something. Instead of continuing
to repeat that. Now you're caught up
to what's going on in this but the second part,
it gets really rough. Listen. Cannot climb. I got ahold of
the aircraft. We cannot climb and we cannot maintain
clearance close to the clouds. N9UP roger, turn
left heading of 090 509UP 9UP and verify you have information Lima
at San Francisco altimeter setting is 29.92 And you want us to set
the heading of 100 for UP? 9UP affirmative
left turn heading 090 Left turn 090 UP And N9UP report the airport
in sight turn left heading 070 070 UP we're in the... we're IMC 9UP San Francisco
altimeter setting 29.92 29.92 UP give me the localizer frequency I
can't get anything here our hands are full 509UP requesting the
localizer frequency for 10 N9UP Roger, standby.
We're trying to get that set up. And 9UP turn right heading 080
join the localizer intercept inbound. Right turn 080. We need
the frequency please. The localizer frequency 509UP Actually N9UP the localizer's
not available for runway 10 Alright, what's the weather?
Will we get the visual? Do you have the airport in sight N9UP?
The airport's 1-2 o'clock and 7 miles UP alright. We're still above
the clouds, we're looking. 9UP, turn right heading 100. Truck rolling. This door is
hanging and a passengers I think they're OK but
they're gonna be pretty upset. 9UP the airport is still
1 o'clock and 4 miles. UP alright. We're just
coming over the clouds now. UP we have the airport insight. Some things to note here is that you
can hear at the beginning of the emergency, that the pilot is rattled. Obviously so. His doors ripped open, he's scared, he doesn't know what's going to be
happening in the next couple seconds. So he's very rattled as far
as what's happening and how is the plane going to fly. As he gets deeper in and
sees the plane is holding, okay, the plane is
flying fine. He knows okay we're flying which means we're okay and we
can get back on the ground safely. So you can hear
him relax a little bit. But I think he is
flying by himself. The other thing to note is
that the Air traffic controller, he is trying to get the Air
traffic controller to help him out. But she is not helping. 29.92 UP give me the localizer frequency I
can't get anything here our hands are full He's trying to get her to
give him a localizer frequency and if you're unfamiliar
with what a localizer is that's how the pilots
line up in bad weather. When we're in the
clouds, that localizer tells us if we're left
or right of the runway. So he's asking
for that frequency. Without that exact
frequency, he has no way to know where he is in
relationship to the runway. And since he's by himself,
you know, we have an Ipad or a book that has all those frequencies
in there that we would normally have out but in this scenario,
he's there flying. The plane is not
handling as it should. So he's there flying. He's not going to be
able to find that especially in a very short time
that he needs to get it. So he's asking the controller:
"Help me out. Get me this frequency". But she doesn't get it. In fact, it's not even working. So there are two parts to that. One, you have a packet, a brief that
you get from that airport which says, These are all the things that's
working or not working at a given airport. When you're leaving an airport,
you're not generally going to read what is not functioning as
far as getting back in there. I'm not saying that you
shouldn't, you should. He should know
that but he didn't. Obviously, because he
didn't know about that runway. And again, in an
emergency situation, he may not be thinking about
that because he's got his hands full. However, the controller should know what is
and isn't working at a particular airport. That's in their
airspace like that. Next, the controller says: "Do you
have the weather at the airport?" 9UP and verify you have information Lima
at San Francisco altimeter setting is 29.92 Why would you ask him
that in this particular scenario? If you needed to give them the
weather which we need in order to land and I've talked about that in a previous
Air traffic control versus pilot videos. You need to have
that information. What would make more sense would be
for the controller in this scenario to say Weather at the field is this. The wind
is like this. The visibility is like this. The clouds are like this and
this is your altimeter setting. There's your information. Because the only way for us, as pilots
to get that information is to request it. Listen to another frequency
to get that information or request it by putting
it into a computer. And shooting it off and
it will come back to us. But this guy probably
is flying by himself and that's not the time for him to be on
another frequency to listen to the weather when he's there talking
with the controller. The controller could give him
that information and let him know: This is everything that you need
to know, let's get you back in there. But the controller seems more concerned
about protecting her legal liabilities by making sure that he avoids
the terrain and things like that. And that's just my opinion and I know
there's going to be some hate from this but really the controller
should be giving him vectors to keep him
away from hitting anything, telling him what the weather is and then getting him low enough so
he can break out and see the runway. If the clouds had been lower, they
would have been in a real pickle because she got them lined up with
the runway, which was good, and then they broke out and was able to
see the runway so he was able to be visual and be able to go and land. So had the weather been lower,
it would have been a problem because she lined him up
on a runway where that thing wasn't working to help
him get lower to the ground. It worked out but this
is definitely a learning experience for any of the
controllers that are there. The pilots, especially when
they're flying by themselves, you need to give them as
much possible assistance to help them in a
scenario like this. He's loading her up with a lot of
stuff that she's not normally asked for, and I get that. But this pilot is not used to
having a door fly off his plane either, so he needs some help. If you've watched
a lot of these videos, you know I tend to be tougher on
the pilots than I am on the controllers but in this scenario, the controller should have
done a lot of different things. Everything worked
out okay but that's fine. But the controller
should have done a lot of different things to not
have it get this bad. Because a few different things, one way or
the other could have made this a problem. Now, some criticism for this
pilot, while he did a great job, he remained calm,
he flew the plane first. He navigated, he communicated. He did all the things that he needed to
do to get the plane safely on the ground. Like he said, I'm sure his
passengers weren't very excited but his radio
phraseology is terrible. The way he's communicating
and some of the shortcuts that he's taking and
what he's saying like: Uniform pop instead
of papa things like that. I just want to say, if you're planning on
being a pilot, do not get into that habit. Because it's fine that the size
of the aircraft that he's flying. He's probably normally
just doing US domestic stuff or maybe Canada or maybe Mexico. But you start flying to other countries
when you're saying things like that and you're not saying the full thing
that you should say which is Papa. You're not saying those things, it's
going to confuse and complicate your life and if that's the habit that
you have, then in an emergency you're going to be
going to that habit. Like in every one of these
breakdowns that I talked about, the end result worked out okay. The pilot did a great job I think
as far as for his ability to navigate, his ability to communicate, minus his poor phraseology
and his aviation skills. Having a door come open is not
something that we normally train for. I don't know how the
aircraft was handling but he was able to get back around
and safely land the aircraft again. So you have to commend
him for that result. Same with the controller,
have some criticism for her. I think she could have
done many things better. I realized that she has certain legal
liabilities and certain responsibilities, but there's a lot of
things in my opinion, that she could have done to
help that pilot out in this scenario. She was slow to know
about the localizer frequency. She didn't know that
it wasn't in service. She was trying to get the pilot to
listen for the information for the weather, and she kept asking them
if they were clear of clouds when clearly wasn't. She knew where the clouds
were so she should know that he wasn't able to maintain his
own separation from the terrain. So at the end of the
day, the result was fine. And that's great,
I'm glad it worked out and hopefully, this is a huge
learning experience for her as far as for how to
handle emergency. Because the truth is while
I'm here critical of what she did, I've never been an
Air traffic controller. I have been in some
emergency situations and you know, you can say
what you want about someone but until you're in their
shoes you don't really know. So that's why it's easier for me to be
critical of a pilot than it is a controller because I know from a pilot's
perspective what we need, and what we are expected to do. A controller situation
is a little bit different. I'm curious to see if the controllers in
the comment sections are defending her or are agreeing with a lot of
the things that I'm saying here and I guess we'll find out. Something that has
become kind of a habit is that I put a funny one
at the end here. And this is funny for me,
probably wasn't funny for the pilot. And I don't think it was really
funny for the plane that went around or for the controller
but I find it entertaining. Cessna 4EK right turn on
Echo contact ground 121.8 4EK I'm looking It's the next right. The right turn next to
you. You need to make it turn right now. EK you got it. Exit the runway
then call ground on 121.8 It looks like you're
now making a 180. Frontier 667 go around Go around 667. Cessna 4EK where... what
are you doing now man? I missed that I couldn't get
off at E. I was already passed it. Yeah. You weren't but
go down to the next one. To D then taxi in to
signature on Charlie. "Yeah. You weren't". I thought it was kind of funny
the way she said that to him. This is funny because
I've been there. When you're a student pilot,
you have sensory overload. You're having to fly the
plane which is a lot of stuff that your brain is
trying to process. You're trying to
communicate on the radio, you're hearing other planes like
this Frontier flight that's behind them, you're trying to
see the taxiways. You've got a lot of different things that
are going on and you can get overwhelmed which is what this pilot did. He got so confused that he
was getting off on the right taxiway but then thought he
was on the wrong one so he thought it'd be smarter to turn
around and go back on the runway. Doesn't really make
any sense to me. It looks like you're
now making a 180. Something to remember, if you're
deciding to ever become a pilot, is that once you land, it's good just to
get off the taxiway. Unless you specifically request: Can I roll to the end or can I
land long or things like that. It's best as soon as you land and you're at
a slow enough speed to get off the runway then to get off the runway. Because you don't
know who's behind you. You may think that you have
a lot of space but you don't. You may have someone behind you that's
taking off that just didn't pay attention or didn't know they
needed to talk on the radio. Most people aren't going to
take off or land on taxiways. Minus a couple people. But most people are not going
to take off and land on a taxiway. So it's safer to just
get off onto the taxiway. The first one that you
see and then get on there, then you can figure
out where you're at and get oriented and figure out
how to get to where you need to go. Now if you do choose to ask the
controller to land long or roll to the end, you want to keep up your speed. I've seen scenarios
where pilots land and they're on this long super
slow roll out and I'm thinking: "You're not even going any faster
than you would if you were on a taxiway" It doesn't make any sense. So if you're going to
ask that, roll quickly to the end and then
get off the runway. You wanna be on the
runway as little as possible. It's not the best place to be
hanging out or spending any time. You get on there when
you're ready for takeoff, you land and you
want to get off. That's how you
should treat a runway. Something that I did, I remember the very
first time that I landed at a big airport, it was Houston International. We landed and if you ever
landed at Houston, it's complicated. It's got two letter taxiways, it's a lot of information. They talk really fast because
they expect you to be professional. I was a newer pilot, I
was flying corporate. I landed there and it was like: "Whoa, this is a lot of
information that's going on" And what I learned from that was when I'm getting ready to land
somewhere that I'm not familiar with before I even go or
before I get ready to land I look at everything
where am I going to land, where am I going to be going to, and roughly what are
they going to tell me. And that gives me some expectations
of what they're going to say to me. And what that does is it gives
me a basic idea of where I'm going and the taxiways I should get. That way I know if I get off an Echo I just need
to go Alpha and Delta to park. Or whatever it is and I know
the direction I'm turning left or right all that stuff. So it's important and that's
part of being prepared as a pilot. There's a lot of stuff to. The weather,
radios, flying, all of it. Most people only
see just the flying part. They think that's
the hardest part. As you saw here, taxi on a busy
airport which this is not that busy but taxing on a busy airport can be
more overwhelming than flying a plane. I know it seems crazy
but it's just how it is. If you want to see
another Air traffic control versus pilots, check
out this video here. And I talked about the Hollywood
versus Reality that I did on Sully and it was, I don't know, two years
ago when all I had was my camera phone, propped up in a window,
sitting in a hotel in Germany. If you want to see that,
check out this video up here. I look forward to
hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side up.
