Air Traffic Control Yells at Lost Pilot | ATC vs. Pilots

Air Traffic Control vs. Pilots. Nobody cleared you through the Bravo but me. Then clear me through. No. Yes. You're an a**hole. Coming up. Hey, 7-4 crew, welcome back. If you don't know me, my name's Kelsey. I'm a 747 pilot. My channel, 7-4 Gear, is all about aviation. After the first Air Traffic Control vs. Pilots video did so well, I got a bunch of messages from people asking if I could explain other interactions between pilots and air traffic control. Alright, let's get into it. 3-9-2-7, declaring an emergency, turning around, direct Kahului Airport. 3-9-2-7, enter left base runway 5. I need vectors right now, 9-2-7. 3-9-2-7, left turn, direct Maui Vortex. I need a vector, sir, 9-2-7. 9-2-7, turn left, heading 1-4-0. Left 1-4-0, 9-2-7. 9-2-7, go ahead with the nature of your emergency. I'm in a spiral descent, in rain and turbulence, 9-2-7. Okay, so you're not experiencing mechanical, so it's weather related. That's affirmative, 9-2-7. Give me that vector one more time. 8-3-9-2-7, fly heading 0-9-0. Left turn, 0-9-0. Do you want it left or right? November 3-9-2-7, fly heading 0-9-0. Left turn, 0-9-0, left turn. We're at 4,000 feet and a hard descent, 9-2-7. For those of you that aren't pilots, there's a lot of terminology being used here, so I want to clear them up for you very quickly. Declaring an emergency. 3-9-2-7, declaring an emergency. Usually means you have a major problem, and they're going to give you a bunch of attention to help you get down on the ground safely. Left base. Enter left base, runway 5. This just means the direction of coming on the airport. If you're on a left base or a right base, it just means it's the final turn before you turn inbound. You're 90 degrees from the landing direction of the runway. So you can be on a left base or a right base, but it just means you have one more turn and then you're lined up to land. Vectors. I need a vector, sir. This means you're asking air traffic control to give you a heading, a certain direction. So if you needed to fly east, you would get a heading of 0-9-0. Vortac. Correct, Maui Vortac. Imagine you lived on this massive farm, and your house was on the middle of that massive farm. And you were out 30 minutes away. And the instructor said, go directly to your house. That would be kind of like using a Vortac. And if you had something on your plane that gave you the heading that you needed to go to, to get to your house, that would basically be what a Vortac is. It just gives you a direction to fly towards something. A lot of times that Vortac might be in the middle of an airport. So if you have it in the middle of the airport and you're a little bit lost, you could say, oh, I need to go directly to that Vortac, and that will at least get you going towards the airport. Or if you're on that big farm, you go directly towards your house. It's the same concept. I'm guessing from what some of the things that this pilot has said so far that they're not a very experienced pilot. But it's always better to play it safe and get back on the ground than to get way outside your comfort zone and outside what you think your capabilities or your plane's capabilities are to handle what's out there. Some of the things that he said led me to believe he's an inexperienced pilot like this one. If you fly into a rainstorm and you want to get out of it, you'd be better as you hit it to just turn around and going away from it. But what he's doing is spiraling down underneath the rainstorm. It doesn't make any sense. If you fly into something that you don't want to be in, the best thing to do is do a 180, go back the other way, not circle down beneath it. And then he said this. We're at 4,000 feet and a hard descent, 927. If you've been on the channel a long time, you know on that Hollywood versus reality that I did on Air Force One, the guy said they were coming in red hot. That's kind of like saying we're in a hard descent at 4,000 feet. To me, a hard descent is doing 10,000 feet a minute or more. That to me is a hard descent. He's at 4,000 feet, which means if he was in a hard descent, he's going to be hitting the water in less than 30 seconds. I'm guessing that he was probably at 1,000 or maybe 1,500 feet a minute in his descent. And to his experience, that may have felt like a hard descent. But air traffic control can see exactly where you're at and the speed that you're descending. You don't need to tell him what type of hard descent you're in. So based off of those few things that he said and everything that's going on so far, I'm guessing that he's an amateur pilot, which is totally fine. You've got to learn somehow, and the only way to learn is to go out there and do it. Obviously, he must have enough experience to be able to be rated to fly into the clouds. And maybe he challenged himself, realized he'd gotten over his head. He said, OK, I'm way over my head. Let me get out of this. I'm not here to bash him or talk about what he did wrong here, but I just want to kind of lay it out so we know what we're dealing with. And I think what we're dealing with is a pilot that's probably new or definitely an amateur in the world of aviation. All right, let's see the next part of this video. ...927... ...3927, report to call the airport in sight. ...enable... ...flow code 927... ...3927, advising of information Charlie... ...working on Charlie, 927... ...ACF approach 927... ...November 3927, go ahead... ...airport in sight, off my 3 o'clock. There are some clouds between us, but I've currently got the beacon in sight. ...3927, so there's your approach runway 2, enter right downwind... A few more quick explanations here. He says he has information Charlie. ...working on Charlie, 927... About every hour, the weather at the airport updates. If the weather's really bad, it might update quicker. But instead of saying, do you have the weather from 30 minutes ago, they give each update a name. So you have Charlie, Delta, Echo, and so on. So he is saying, do you have information Charlie? Do you have the current weather that's happening over the airport right now? The next thing to know, and this is important for later on in the video, is the pilot says he doesn't want to do the ILS, he wants to do the visual. I need vectors for a visual, 927. If you aren't familiar with what an ILS is, it's the way that pilots fly through clouds to land in an airport. Instrument landing system. I made a video about it a while back. It's kind of boring, to be honest with you, but imagine it's the tools that we use to fly through the clouds. If you've ever flown through the clouds and then you come out like a few hundred feet off the ground, that's what we're using to get down onto the ground. He's saying, no, no, I don't want that. Just get me to the airport, I'll see it, and I'll go and land. Right after this is when things start to heat up. Remember, he said he wanted a visual approach to the runway there, and he says now that he has the airport at his three o'clock, which if you think about it like a clock, it means it's off his right-hand side. And so he's saying, I see the airport, and earlier he requested a visual for landing at that airport. Also, it's important to remember that the controller offered him to use an ILS to fly through that approach through the clouds. The controller offered him that, and he said, no, no, I want the visual. All right, listen to this part. That's not helping me very much. Give me a vector, give me an altitude to fly, and I'll call at 927. Yeah, I'm not, you know, I don't understand. You told me you got the airport in sight, and now you're asking me for a vector. Which one is it? I declared an emergency. I told you I've got the beacon in sight, and there's clouds between us, so it's intermittent. Give me a vector, give me an altitude, 927. Do you have the airport in sight or not? Which one is it? I don't anymore. Okay, 3927, cancel your approach clearance, maintain 4,000 feet, turn right heading 140. Right, 140, 4,000 feet, 927. 3927, check the altitude. I'm showing 3,700 feet. That's an incorrect altitude. Maintain 4,000 feet. You can hear that the controller is now getting irritated because the pilot is basically giving him mixed signals. He's saying, I want a visual approach, I see the airport, okay, now I want you to give me vectors to get there. So he's getting a little bit irritated now. If you tell a controller that you want a visual approach and that you see the airport, that tells the controller, I'm going to go land at that airport, I can see it. Listen to what happens next. I'm climbing to 4,000 right now. Listen, I declared the emergency. Take a deep breath, get me out of it. 3927, maintain 4,000 feet. Maintaining 4,000, 927. 3927, let me know when you see the airport. 1 o'clock, 7 miles. Will do, thank you, sir. 3927, roger. 3927, what's the airport in sight? Be advised, there are layers of clouds both above and below my altitude, 3927. Him saying listen when he says that? Listen, I declared the emergency. Like if you've had a girlfriend and you're saying, hey, stop being crazy and calm down. It's kind of like that. The fact that he's telling the controller that he has clouds above him is totally irrelevant. It doesn't matter, you're not going up, you're going down. So saying you have clouds below you, it doesn't matter. You see the airport or you don't see the airport. If you're ever in this situation and you tell the controller that you have the airport, they're going to expect that it's over to you now to get yourself down on that runway. So if you don't feel comfortable to do that, then don't do that. I've had it in a 747 where it's a very clear day, calm, beautiful, not a lot of traffic, and the controller will tell you, hey, the airport's right there at 1 o'clock. Do you see it? And they want to clear you for a visual approach there. I've had pilots say, no, I don't want to be clear for the visual. We don't say that, but you just say, no, I don't see the runway. And what that means is under the controller's responsibility to get you lined up lower and closer to the runway until you see it. Once that you say, yes, I see the airport, they're kind of hands off. It's over to you. So they're kind of passing that responsibility on to you. If the pilots don't feel comfortable or they don't want the responsibility of it, then they say, no, I don't see it. Even if they do see it, they say, no, I don't see it. And then the controller goes, okay, I'll get you lower and closer to the airport until you do see it. If he told the controller, I need your help. Get me a little bit lower. Get me a little bit closer. I'm a little bit nervous and flustered. I'm sure that controller would have done everything to help him out. Instead, he's giving a little bit of a bad attitude. And then in return, you can hear the attitude that the controller is giving back to him. Like, you're not meeting the proper altitude. That's what's going to happen. So there's really no reason for him to flex on that controller. And the controller is obviously irritated. I mean, they're in Hawaii. Relax, bro. All right, let's see the next video. For this next video, it's important to understand something about the terminology. In aviation, the whole world is covered in different types of airspace. There's alpha airspace and Bravo airspace and Charlie airspace. But this Bravo airspace is what they're going to talk about in this next clip here. Bravo airspace is the airspace that's around a major airport. And your typical small little pilot usually can't come into that airspace because there's big jets that are in there. We're flying fast, and we can't have a small Cessna crossing in the middle or messing up when you've got 400 people on board. So they kind of have this sectioned off airspace for the big boys to come in and out. That's Bravo airspace. This doesn't mean that you can never go through Bravo airspace because it's something that you have to do as you go through flight school. Now, he's going to fly into Las Vegas Bravo airspace. Now I did my private pilot flying out in Vegas. That airspace, they usually don't let people go into it. I got to go through it once. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was so excited hearing all the planes talking and all the big jets and all the airliners going in there. And I was like, oh, my gosh, one day I'm going to be able to do that. But I know because I asked, I don't know, 30 times, and I only got permission to go through one time. I know that they don't let a lot of planes go through there. So listen up. This guy goes into the Bravo airspace without permission. One November Romeo, I need you outside of the Bravo. Negative. Negative what? I'm inside. You were not given a clearance through the Bravo. One November Romeo, exit the Bravo immediately. I've been talking to you the whole time. That's the whole point of talking to you. You have to have a Bravo clearance. You have to request a Bravo clearance. The Bravo clearance about 50 miles ago. Nobody cleared you through the Bravo but me. Then clear me through. No. Yes. You're false. She's being an ass. That is not appropriate language. 779, traffic, 12 o'clock, 4 miles, is a Cessna Centurion descending out of 4,700 inside the Bravo without a clearance. Okay, we'll look at 779. I've asked for a clearance multiple times. One November Romeo, I told you to remain outside the Bravo. One November Romeo, possible pilot deviation. Advise you contact Las Vegas Approach at, I'll give you the number when you're ready to copy. Not ready to copy. I'm flying. One November Romeo, Henderson Tower. Henderson Tower, one November Romeo. This is what entitlement sounds like when it comes to aviation. This guy felt like because he requested permission, he was now cleared to go into it even though he wasn't granted the permission. She actually starts to roast him a little bit by mentioning that he's in that airspace without permission. And a normal pilot would say, oh man, I really messed up and change his attitude. But not this guy. Now, as he got into this airspace, had he said, oh ma'am, I misunderstood. I thought it was cleared into this airspace. I'm heading this heading and getting out of the airspace. I apologize. I misunderstood. Had he said something like that, it probably wouldn't have been too big of a deal. He may have gotten violated, but it wouldn't have, one, made it onto this series. And he would have probably gone into not a lot of trouble. People make mistakes. Pilots make mistakes. It's part of life. But instead, what he does is he starts being a jerk. It's kind of like being a jerk after you've gotten pulled over by the police. Being a jerk to your cop is never going to get you out of the ticket. It's just going to make things worse, which is what's happened here. You heard her say, I have a number for you to copy. I'll give you the number when you're ready to copy. If you fly in aviation long enough, you'll end up hearing this. It's something you never want to hear as a pilot. You never want to get told there's a number for you to call because it means you've messed up so bad that they don't want to have the conversation over the radio. They want to have it over the phone. It's never good. One of the worst ones I remember hearing, I was flying during the inauguration in 2016. I was flying in and out of D.C. all the time. And I heard on a frequency that we listened to, a guard, I heard on that frequency that a guy from the Air Force had called this plane and said in this very stern voice that is not nearly as nice as your typical air traffic controller, you need to exit this airspace immediately. And then he was given a number to call. So I knew right there they were going to be in a lot of trouble. You never want to get a phone number to call. And if you get a phone number to call, you probably shouldn't say, no, I don't want to copy it down. Again, that's not going to help. This is all going to get recorded, and if they escalate it, now you're going to be sitting with the FAA or whoever the governing body is of that country. It's not going to work out well for you. At the end of the day, you need to realize that flying is a privilege. Whether you're flying a 747 or a Cessna 152 or anything in between, it's a privilege. It's not a right. Asking for something, you may get it, you may not get it. But if you don't get what you want, throwing a temper tantrum is probably not going to help you get there. Okay, let's see the next video. This one's funny. Right behind that Lufthansa 747. Once he exits the alleyway there, we'll be able to make a right turn and head into the gate area. Thank you for remaining seated until I will turn off the seatbelt sign once we park at the gate. Until that time, please remain seated. Again, welcome to New York. It's a beautiful evening here, about 70 degrees right now. Let the abuse start. Come on, you can't let him get away with that. Nice breeze. Welcome to New York. Thank you for being here. What was the temperature again? Where's our gate? Flight attendants always would ask me to make an announcement to the passengers if we were delayed in getting into our gate and tell people to stay in their seats and keep their seatbelts on because they would make the announcement and people didn't always listen to them. So I would always be fine. Yeah, I'll make an announcement. I'll tell them to stay in their seats. I don't have a problem with that. And they will listen to the pilots more than they will listen to the flight attendants, which is annoying, but this is the world that we live in. What happens is, is up there you've seen on the flight deck, there is a lot of different buttons up there. And sometimes you hit one button and you hit the wrong button, one to make a PA, make an announcement to the back, but you hit the wrong frequency and you transmit or you don't hit the button hard enough and you're transmitting talking to air traffic control ground frequency at I'm guessing JFK, which is what it sounds like here. He meant to be making that announcement to the back to all the passengers, but he made it there. And of course, JFK being JFK, they weren't going to let him get away with that. And so they, instead of roasting them themselves, they let all the pilots roast them. Now pilots love roasting other pilots because we have all done that. I've transmitted on the wrong frequency. I've transmitted on guard and announcement. I mean, I just, I don't know, a week ago heard a guy coming in. He was on a corporate jet and he was on guard. Guard is a frequency 121.5 that we listen to and monitor in the case of emergency. You can hear the planes that are around you. Air traffic control can reach you there. It's a frequency that I've talked about in other videos, but it's something that we're always listening to on top of the main frequency that we're talking to air traffic control with. It's just a monitor frequency. This pilot as he's coming in is flying a corporate jet, and I don't know who he's got on there, but obviously there's somebody very important because he says, hey, calls up on the guard frequency, meaning to call the people in the private area of the airport that handles private jets, meaning to call them. He calls up these people on guard and says, hey, listen, our guy's coming in. Make sure the cars are ready. It has to be ready or they're going to be pissed. And I hear one of the pilots get on there and go, don't worry, sir. The car will be waiting for you as soon as you land. He's like, great, thanks. Appreciate it. And I thought, I don't know who he's got in that plane, but instead of letting him think that he just called guard, he now thinks he spoke to somebody there. And that's just kind of who pilots are. We're for children. If you enjoy me explaining these air traffic control videos, you'll probably enjoy me explaining these aviation videos. If you want to see one of those, I put a link to it right here. If you want to see me explaining some Hollywood videos, what's real and what's not, I'll put a link to that video up here. I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side up.