We have an emergency return to Philadelphia after takeoff. He's also in a panicky return back to the airport. Let's listen in. American 2035, multiple bird strikes. We'll need to return. American 2035 roger, contact... actually... contact Departure 124.35. I'll let them know. Are you declaring an emergency? Okay. The main player here is American Airlines flight 2035. It's an Airbus 321neo. It's one of the brand new shiny airplanes out there from Airbus, and they're about to return back to the airport. They're shortly after rotate, they run into multiple birds. We don't know how many, but that's more than one for sure. And one bird will get your attention. Multiple birds will really get your attention. We don't know whether they've got an engine failure yet. We don't know what the extent of the damage is. All we know is that they've called to return back to the airport or actually say that they've got the bird strikes. The controller is going to hand them over to departure because they have to talk to departure to get turned around to get sequenced back in to go to Philadelphia or wherever they're going to end up going. And she says to them, are you declaring an emergency? Let's see what they do. Not at... Sure, we'll declare an emergency now. We'll go to 24.35. Okay, he almost said not at this time, but they said, okay, sure, right. She kind of let him into it, which is good. The only thing he misses here is I don't ever hear Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. That should be the first thing that comes out of your mouth when you're declaring an emergency, but I understand because she said the word emergency, he comes back with, yep, okay, yeah, we got an emergency. Let's let's play this one a little bit more tight to the vest than we would normally because we don't know the extent of the damage. And so, yeah, you know what? I'm thinking about it now. The captain says, I think we need to turn around and I think we need to land back at Philadelphia. So on they go. Here we go. American 2035, contact them on 124.35. Departure, American 2035, is checking in, we're leveling here at 3000 and need to go back to the airport. American 2035, radar contact, maintain 3000. Do you need to run a checklist or are you coming right back? We're gonna run a checklist so we'll need some vectors here, for 2035. American 2035, turn left heading 360 and you can expect a return to 9R. Okay, this is absolutely textbook. This is exactly the way we train in the simulator. He's basically runway heading to 3000 feet. That's what most pilots will ask for, that's what most air traffic controllers will clear you to. We're all in sync on that, if you can do it. Now, if you're in mountainous terrain or there's there's something an obstacle out in front of you and you can't do 3000, you got to do something higher, they will give you that. But most of us are trained runway heading 3000. Let's get the airplane stabilized, let's get the airplane cleaned up, so they'll be bringing the flaps up while they're accelerating. Once they get to either cleaned up and they can turn and come back, that's when they'll continue with whatever initial checklist they started. In this case, we don't know whether they lost an engine or not. They haven't said just yet. They might be busy doing an engine out checklist. They might be busy just kind of assessing where their aircraft is right now in terms of damage to it. But at a minimum, they're going to go back to Philadelphia, land, sort it out on the ground. That's a great plan. And again, don't rush yourself back into Philadelphia. There's a lot of checklists you got to do and there's a lot of people you got to talk to. You heard me say it on this channel before. The way I was trained is it's two in and two out. I got to talk to the passengers, that's number one. I got to talk to the flight attendants, that's number two, and I got that reversed order. Talk to the flight attendants first, then talk to the passengers. And then two out. I have to talk to ATC and let them know what I want to do, and I have to talk to my own company and my dispatcher to let them know what we're doing. So at this point, they're flying the airplane, they're getting it leveled off at 3000 feet, they're accelerating.
