Originally Posted by
mike734
It is a topic because the crew faced certificate action as a result of not squawking the code. I think that is ridiculous. It is a topic because you may be in a similar situation. Maybe you can learn something from this topic.
Our QRH also says you should squawk 7700. It is the fact that it is written in the QRH that got the FAA's panties in a bunch. Still I think some bureaucrat lost sight of the big picture. The crew got the airplane down and everyone was safe.
Did the FAA pursue certificate action or did they ask questions during the investigation? There is a difference.
Based on what little information you have provided about the situation the Fed's issue was with the fact that the crew missed something on the checklist. It seems to me that is fair game to investigate. Questions I have are why did they miss it? Did it affect safety? Can the procedure be written better? Trained better? Executed better? I'm guessing the FAA investigators had similar questions and probably asked them. When the story was told later it may have become "the FAA threatened certificate action."
I could be completely wrong about what happened but you haven't provided enough information to actually know what happened. Only in your follow up post did you even mention that squawking 7700 was in your emergency descent checklist. It's not in my company's checklist which leads me to believe it's not the action of squawking 7700 which drew the FAA investigator's ire but the fact that the crew didn't do a checklist item.