Anyone seen this? What do you think, does anyone have details of the emergency?

LiveATC Recordings | LiveATC.net

5/5, 14:33 clip

It sounds to me like the guy just got ****ed off and declared, I'd like to assume that's not the case. Thanks!

American Too Heavy... that was the greatest call sign ever.

Landing 22 Wind 320 at 23 Gust 35.

The Gusts are now exceeding the demonstrated Crosswind Limitation.

(Having flown out of JFK for years they are notorious for this, don't get me wrong, those boys can push some tin, and over all it is very enjoyable to work with them. However you can routinely find yourself at the limits with winds).

If anything happened to flight 2 during the touchdown rollout etc, having been above the limitation in our Ops Manual (volume I), AA would hang them.

We often get into the mission hacker state of mind, and of course the the type A personalty in us can ALWAYS fly or land in ANY conditions because many of us want to prove we can, prove we are good enough to ourselves to our peers etc. It is a mindset we need to break, many accidents are littered with guys exceeding the demonstrated capabilities of the aircraft or themselves.

Cheers,

AA

Go Around? If low on gas Min Fuel, then emergency? It seems like the audio may be missing some exchange between ATC and crew that would better explain their decision.

I certainly hope there was something else going on that isn't evident from the tapes. If not, then this was certainly not the way to handle the situation.

lol...awesome armchair quarterbacking goin on in here! get real guys

Exactly why might he have declared an emergency? I'm no "professional" but couldn't he have gone missed or gone around?

I agree with what was said above. I really hope there was something missing from this tape.

What part of "crosswind value was exceeding aircraft limitations" do you guys not understand?

Is it an actual limitation or max demonstrated. All jets I've flown have had a max demonstrated which is not a limitation, thus exceeding it is not a limitation, but I dont know that airplane.

I'll bet they had already declared minimum fuel with approach and maybe even asked for 31L and been denied. The crew probably came to the conclusion that if they got one wind report out of tolerance they were declaring an emergency and landing the plane. If they hadn't declared an emergency, they probably would have been vectored all over creation while the controllers attempted to accommodate their request for 31L. I don't think they would carelessly pull the emergency card unless they absolutely needed to.