I’m guessing that pilot had also been taught the lesson of Avianca 052, which crashed at JFK because the FO / captain did not explicitly declare a fuel emergency.

JFK ATC in particular has an enormous workload with many international flights, combined with direct, even conflictual at times, NY communication style. It puts the onus on the pilot for conveying the message to ATC, rather than ATC for extracting the message from the pilot.

You might be thinking of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQuHnrJu1I

For comparison, this is what can happen when the pilots are not that assertive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052

this was it, thanks for finding it. I didn't realize it happened 14 years ago

> But it was a valuable lesson learned in speaking up before you get to that point.

I'm not sure it was a lesson learned per-se because the captain was merely doing his job as fundamentally defined.

A captain has ultimate responsibility for the aircraft.

However there is a side question in relation to your post...

When you say "declared an emergency" in your post, the more interesting question would be whether it was actually formally declared by the captain (i.e. "MAYDAY") or whether the captain was merely "working with" ATC at a lower level, maybe "PAN" or maybe just informal "prioritised".

If the captain DID declare "MAYDAY" earlier in the timeframe then yes, Kennedy would have a lot to answer for if they were spending excessive time vectoring around.

But if the captain did not formally declare and then came back later and started bossing Kennedy around, that would be a different set of questions, focused on the captain.

The word Mayday is not required to declare an emergency. Pan pan still indicates an emergency. And neither phraseology is required as long as the intent is clear, see https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html...

In fact, it doesn’t even need to be the pilots who declare an emergency https://hsi.arc.nasa.gov/flightcognition/Publications/non_EA...

> The word Mayday is not required to declare an emergency.

That may be so in the US.

But it is a bad habit to pick up.

Especially if you are an airline pilot and you frequently fly to destinations where English is not the first language.

Or indeed in US airspace where you frequently get international carriers flying in and out.

There is a reason why there is internationally agreed standard phraseology for radio communications.

Everyone learns MAYDAY/PAN and the associated expectations around it (e.g. radio silence etc. etc.)

Not everybody will be able to adequately follow along if you have a long drawn-out waffle discussion over the radio ... "we have a little problem" ... "do you want to declare?" ... "oh wait, standby ...." ...."oh, we're ok for now" ... "oh actually maybe this or that"... yada yada yada.

If its truly an emergency then cut the crap and use the standard phraseology and keep the communications terse.

In the US, we don't typically call Mayday/PanPan (despite it being both allowable and more correct). Pilots literally say "N777DS declaring an emergency. Engine out/Low fuel/Birdstrike". The effect is that all emergencies are Mayday.

someone further down found the incident [1] I was referring to. It was 14 years ago, not 5 as I had initially thought. Curious to hear your take on it. Pilot said "if you don't give me this runway, I'm going to declare an emergency..." which I don't think is the most helpful thing to say. But there were definitely many swiss-cheese holes lining up that day.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQuHnrJu1I