OFF RADAR. Everything you wanted to know about emergency landings

Any news about a plane making an emergency landing makes one assume the worst. This is also what happened when an Air India flight from Varanasi to Delhi made an emergency landing at Delhi airport recently due to a hydraulic leak.

But what is an emergency landing and what makes a pilot tell the air traffic controller that the flight has developed a major snag and will go in for an emergency landing?

Besides a hydraulic leak, a pilot opts for an emergency landing when there is an engine failure or a fire in any part of the aircraft.

All pilots have to follow a set of laid down parameters when flying a plane. If at any stage during a flight a pilot feels that all the parameters are not as they should be, he declares an emergency landing. All pilots are taught to handle an emergency situation not only as a part of their initial training but this also forms a part of the simulator training that pilots go through regularly.

A cross section of pilots that BusinessLine spoke to said there were two types of calls that a pilot can make — Pan-Pan and May Day. Of these, May Day is an emergency while Pan-Pan is an urgency call. Says a pilot, “Since it is advisable to land the aircraft and get the issue checked, a pilot will either look to land immediately if it is a May Day call, or in case of a Pan-Pan call he will look to land the aircraft at a suitable airport which means that the airline might have its own technical staff stationed there to look into the problem.”

Adds another pilot, “A May Day call can be downgraded to Pan-Pan if the various procedures that pilots are taught during training help in bringing the emergency under control.”

The good news is that all pilots maintain that in almost 99.9 per cent of emergencies the aircraft is still flyable. This is also borne out by the fact that aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus certify that their aircraft are Extended Twin Engines Operations capable, meaning that a two-engine aircraft is capable of remaining airborne for about two hours even if one of the engines fail.

Pilots also point to the fact that there are various redundancies and alternative systems which are built into the various systems on an aircraft to ensure a safe flight. For example, there are at least two fire extinguisher systems in each aircraft engine which automatically start when a fire is detected and if the landing nose gear does not respond then a pilot has another lever in the cockpit that he can use.

“When a call is given to the Air Traffic Control, it will ask what is the emergency? What kind of help is required? Whether there is need to immediately clear the runway or if an evacuation is required. In a May Day call not only will the aircraft get priority landing permission but the ATC might even shift to a special radio frequency to communicate with the pilot,” a pilot said. 

After every incident not only does the airline involved carry out a detailed investigation but in India even the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, conducts an inquiry. 

So, while it might not be possible to prevent incidents as an aircraft is just a machine which can develop snags, what is significant is that flyers understand that not only are they in the hands of capable pilots but that airports too are geared to handle most eventualities.

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