Originally Posted by Timbo

Re. the above AA 2 Hvy incident; I liked it, ie. I support AA 2 Heavy. I'm guessing they were in a 767, the crosswind limitation for that airplane is 29kts. and the winds were reported at about 90 degrees off runway headding, gusting to 35kts, they -cannot- legally accept that runway for landing.

We don't know what their fuel state was, but perhaps they had been holding for a while, and then got these winds (illgal for landing) and had already requested runway 31. I beileve he allueded to that when I heard AA 2 say, "I told you if we didn't get runway 31, we would have to declare an emergency..."

They declared the emergency, and did what they needed to do to land safely.

I think the "Tool" was the ATC guy, who 1. didn't give them RW 31, and then 2. didn't seem to understand what that means, when a pilot declares an emergency, and kept trying to give them vectors. The crew had to TELL HIM, "We HAVE declared and emergency, 3 TIMES! Now get everyone out of our way, we are landing!"

Bravo.

Never forget, ATC is down there, only because WE are up there, not vice versa. They are there to SERVE US, we are not up there to make their job easier by landing on runways with winds out of limits.

Oh, and they have never lost a controller in an aiplane accident...they still get to clock out and go home, every day.