Maule Driver wrote:
That was interesting. Hearing the use of "pan pan" makes me wonder, "is
there a hassle factor involved with diverting internationally (for the
scheduleds)"? I can almost hear the crew, coming up with a solution to
their low fuel then, seeing it required a US landing, deciding to add
the "pan pan" to their low fuel to ensure desired handling.

AFAIK planes flying from the Northeast US to points West often transit
through Canadian airspace up around Toronto so I would think that the
controllers up there (Toronto/Detroit area) have no difficulty
coordinating. I'm not familiar with the use of the p-word in aviation
but from my maritime experience I recall it as being shorthand for
saying, "If you don't help me right now, this can turn into a Mayday
situation." That would seem relevant here where you might have someone
who is trying to cut through traffic on freq. It also seems to me
sometimes that the US has more idiosyncratic aviation phraseology while
other parts of the world hew closer to maritime language. Does "minimum
fuel" mean the same thing in Europe that it does here?

-cwk.