wrote:

, "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?

What is interesting in the case of the KLM aircraft is that the pilot first
stated PAN-PAN, then continued by saying "Low fuel emergency."

Wouldn't the inclusion of the word "emergency" be the same as a pilot
stating "I am declaring an emergency" and therefore be handled by ATC as an
emergency?

It seemed to me that the subsequent exchange by the KLM pilot and ATC
didn't sound as if the situation was being treated as an emergency. For
example, the KLM pilot was requesting, not stating his intentions, and at
one point the KLM pilot was declined either an altitude or heading due to
nearby traffic, which I would have expected would have been moved out of
the way by then.


--
Peter