Emergencies - Controller Guide

An emergency is, by definition, an emergency involving an aircraft in the air that poses a serious and immediate threat for the aircraft and/or its occupants.

The handling of each emergency for the controller is highly individual, as no two situations are the same. This guide should therefore be seen as a basis / orientation.

Relevance to Vatsim

According to the VATSIM Code of Conduct, a pilot may only declare an emergency when they receive ATC service. The controller may request the pilot to terminate the emergency at any time and without giving reasons. The pilot must comply with this request immediately or disconnect from the network.

Furthermore, no hijacking may be simulated and the transponder code 7500 may not be set.

For you as an ATCO this means: If you are not familiar with handling an emergency, rather refuse it. If you are currently too busy (e.g. due to a high traffic load), or are in doubt for any other reason, it is reasonable to refuse the emergency. Neither the pilot nor you will benefit in any way if the emergency is handled unsafely, completely unrealistically or carelessly.

Types of emergencies

On the pilot's side, there is a difference between the two well-known messages "Mayday" and "Pan Pan":

On the controller side, the term emergency is defined much more broadly. A distinction is often made between a local standby, a full emergency and an aircraft accident, although not all types of emergency fit into one of these categories.

Handling of an emergency

As every emergency is different, there is no one-size-fits-all guide for handling emergencies. Nevertheless, there is a scheme that can help you as a controller to handle an emergency in a structured way in a stressful situation. This scheme is known as the ASSIST scheme, where each letter stands for a measure:


Revision #3
Created 11 September 2024 18:52:25 by 1583954
Updated 4 October 2024 12:30:53 by 1583954