wjcandee

For what it's worth:

“Quick, contact traffic control,” Cynthia urged.

"Better call ATC" [or "Better call Center"], Cynthia suggested.

Why is the female Cynthia and the guy Perez? As in the military, female pilots are often referred to and addressed by their last name, unless this is a romance novel or a script for a daytime drama (I'm serious), in which the female would indeed be referred to by her first name.

Perez flipped a switch.

Perez keyed the microphone.

“Cleveland Centre, LASS two niner seven eight heavy. Declaring Pan Pan Pan. Suspected explosive on board. Unable to land at Dulles,” Captain Perez said.

"Cleveland Center, LASS 2978."

"LASS 2978, Cleveland Center."

"Center, we're declaring an emergency. Apparently have an explosive on board. Need vectors towards an unpopulated area." [It's clunky to have all this s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g out the numbers, and do we have to have a nine in the number so the pilot can say "niner"? It's all unnecessary. If I were your editor, I would say change the flight number and put the number in as a number.]

“LASS two niner seven eight heavy, Cleveland Centre. Roger. Stand by.”

“We can head for the Allegheny National Forest, which should be about twenty minutes if we come right to 085,” Cynthia told Perez.

“LASS two niner seven eight heavy, Cleveland Centre. Do you have an aircraft handling situation?”
Delete this.

Captain Perez keyed the mic again. “Cleveland Centre, LASS 2978. We believe the device is nuclear, and we're gonna turn right to heading 085 and proceed towards the Allegheny Forest area. We want to minimize potential civilian casualties,” he announced.

“LASS 2978, Cleveland Center. Stand by.”

“What the hell is going on?” Captain Perez asked Cynthia as he started his right turn.

I don't know which way they're going, so I don't know whether 085 is to the left or right. I chose right. As noted above, if you have a bomb onboard that apparently you expect to detonate soon, you're going to tell ATC what you're doing, and they can/will clear the traffic for you.

dera

I'd say the realistic response from ATC would be "LASS 2978 heavy, Cleveland Center, what kind of assistance do you need".

GoodRide

In practice, “heavy” is omitted when you’re talking to center.

Elevation

Different pilots with different backgrounds would handle this situation differently. The specific terminology is discussed in some detail above. The courses of action taken depend a lot on the personalities of the characters you're trying to depict.

Those of us with experience in stranger parts of the industry can probably attest to the general levels of confusion and miscommunication that happen during the initial moments of a crisis.

So an experienced crew may spend a small but prudent amount of time establishing the facts so they can take the best course of action. The bomb or whatever isn't detonating immediately, so there'd be time to steer to an unpopulated area (probably not the allegheny national forest). There'd be time to coordinate with experts via phone-patch or direct satphone connection, get details of triggering, etc. There would also be a flood of extraneous communications occuring as airplanes get switched to discrete frequencies, ATC establishes fuel and souls on board, etc. So confusion rather order prevails in crisis. If you want to depict effective leadership, your crew will forge a semblance of order during this moment of devolving chaos.

With regard to some technical details, there are altitudes to optimize and minimize the effect of an air-burst, and consideration would be given to be at altitude high enough to avoid raising large amounts of debris into the atmosphere (which drastically affect the amount of radioactive fallout downwind).

It'd be believable and laudable to take an initial course to a place that you might think would be best to have some kind of event, but there'd be coorindation and a number of technical decisions occuring during this whole process.

There'd probably be a re-allocation of duties while the captain coordinated with company and experts. The first officer would probably take over control of the aircraft and ATC, etc.

Regarding jargon, there are a lot of ways these things can go down. You wouldn't be wrong ensuring everyone uses correct phraseology and even appropriate brevity. You wouldn't be wrong having things revert to plain-language or a mix thereof.

I'd focus on realism of the decisions and actions rather than the jargon. My two cents.

WacoQCF

Not today isis....

Cujo665

Pick an MD-11 operator of your choice and contact their chief pilots office. Once your Identity and purpose are verified, I’m sure they’d be happy to discuss non security sensitive procedures with you, and to help clean up dialogue language.

Teaching people to sound like a legitimate pilot on the radio isn’t really necessary for a great book or movie. In fact, some of the lingo would likely confuse the non aviation public.

Company and Security procedures, really shouldn’t be out in public in most cases, and I definitely don’t want to see an accurate book or movie detailing what actually happens. That just educates the enemy.

Nothing like telling Tehran how to get their suitcase bomb into cargo and into the US and then avoid the likely interdiction efforts.

rickair7777

Generic radio procedures are not SSI, and are available in open source FAA docs (Ie the AIM). You can also use a cheap handheld radio to monitor ATC comms to get a feel for routine stuff.

But I would caution anyone who's going to get involved to not cross the line with SSI, which any company info probably would be. Also recall TSA restrictions on providing certain types of instruction (including ground training).

whalesurfer

Agree. Very few places in the world have I ever heard the term ‘heavy’ being used. Maybe because every single airplane out there seems to be a heavy? In Canada they use ‘heavy’ during the initial call. In Asia Taipei will (occasionally) use the term and only while on the ground. Same with Narita..
I’ve never heard the term ‘heavy’ in Europe. (‘Super’ on the other hand is common).
It seems to be airline specific, for example Atlas, Omni and few other US based airlines use the term most of the time..
Not saying they’re right or wrong, just stating the facts..

Good luck with your book Peter!