Originally Posted by
rickair7777
You'd prefer mid-air to sucking rubber? If the cabin's at 10K and climbing slowly you have a little time to mitigate the collision risk before plummeting blindly. I've done a couple, and one time got a real good look at opposite direction traffic on the way down.
But that is not what you said.
but personally I'd try to coordinate with ATC first unless the cabin was in the 30's.
If you've got a slow leak and the cabin is rising slowly you can try to mitigate it with manual out flow ETC and if you are having success it would be appropriate to work on a clearance in that case. If my cabin is climbing rapidly and the rubber jungle is eminent it's time to go down. If you wait and muddle around and play the ATC clearance game until the cabin gets into the 30's as you said above you've made a grave error in judgement. And you might just kill some or all of your PAX by doing so. I am sick and tired of hearing about people allowing ATC to kill them by not understanding what they can and should do in an emergency situation.
The last one I had we got the cabin ALT master warning when the cabin climbed above 10,000. We popped the masks on and by the time I pulled a checklist the cabin was climbing above 16,000. Rapid descent time. ATC was advised passing FL310 we were at FL320.
It was a faulty outflow valve BTW. It would not respond to auto or manual inputs.