Sometimes you want to be on the main frequency, so everyone else knows whats going on and keeps off the channel. Sometimes if it takes a while to complete, you want to shift the incident off to resume operations around the incident. When you're in the middle of doing the job, sometimes you don't hear a channel change; comms are secondary in that case - on scene, folks get on with the job first and are usually pretty well coordinated without needing to rely on radios.

Exactly!

Trying to have clear radio communication with 16 persons is hard. Now try that with a whole airfield, there will be some trouble.

Why are we still using radio systems where only one transmission can be made at a time? Surly its time to have a partyline system so people know when they are stepping on each other.

Not everyone.

Thanks Diane, glad you're still enjoying the videos with all the competition about! The Southwest crew were very, very, very keen to get the controller's attention - understandably so when they see a plane on fire. 😅

It seems to me that regardless of what frequency, even when they were on the same, ARFF vehicles missed several transmissions...

It’s possible the AARF had dismounted their vehicles for inspection. Their headsets / helmet mics are tuned into each other on a battalion frequency, not the tower. Also if they were outside of their trucks with the jet engines still idling they wouldn’t be able to hear anything anyways!

@@jaywhoisit4863 that is true...

First, easier to coordinate ALL traffic if they are on the same frequency. Remember that everyone is part of the safety, so letting other planes and other people on the Tower frequency also hear makes everyone able to help out by not standing in the way and so on. And the ARFF have their own internal frequency where they communicate so they do stuff without you hearing it. And they know what to do. Even without using radios so they take care of things and have the situaton under control. Just trust them, as you would trust the pilot.

119.3 is Tower for Runway 9R/27L and 121.65 is Ground for Runway 10/28. The civil aviation emergency frequency is 121.5 (Guard frequency) and it’s absolutely NOT used for coordinating ground operations. It’s a monitored frequency for pilots to communicate serious in-flight emergencies and ATC/military to contact a NORDO or unresponsive pilot. The FAA really doesn’t play around when it comes to misusing the emergency frequencies. ATL is the busiest airport in the world. A plane takes off/lands every 1.5 minutes all day everyday. I don’t know what kind of communication errors you think you heard but ARFF had this situation completely handled in the span of just 5 minutes. That’s 5 minutes from “his left gear is on fire” to “It looks good, just a little bit of light smoke.” The first ARFF vehicle arrived on scene within 2 minutes. You spend longer than that just using the bathroom. Now the Spirit pilots? I’m betting ATL Ops and the FAA have a number for the pilots to take down and give them a call. The pilot said the left brake locked at 90 knots, started heating up, and then they lost the entire yellow hydraulic system. And the interesting part is how they apparently didn’t feel the need to tell ATC about that as soon as they had safely slowed down. It looks like they had the intention to just go ahead and taxi to their gate and not tell ATC about having possibly left some fod and hydraulic fluid on runways 10 and 27L before another plane landed or departed. Bonus points for getting snippy with the controller over the frequency change, forgetting to change the frequency and then calling the Tower thinking it was ARFF. Yeah, I don’t know that ATC or ARFF were actually the problem here.

Cheers doofus! Glad you're enjoying the videos. ✈

Thanks for watching and commenting!

there was no reply from ground chief when tower called

Cheers!

Cheers! The radar display runs in custom software I wrote.

You have the best animations of any of these similar channels. Well done!

The pilot(s), controller, and dispatcher can declare an emergency. A bystander, like SW330's pilot, cannot.

@@Wick9876 that's not true... Any dangerous situation like that can be called in as a mayday call. Sure, somebody else will decide what to do about it, but anybody can call in. You can find videos of pilots making a mayday call to report that a different plane has an engine fire.

Not true anyone can declare, a good example available on KZfaq is Kennedy steve when speedbird 11J declared for an engine fire on another aircraft

They are tuned into a battalion frequency that we cannot hear. Most likely AARF 4 and 8 were telling everyone else to slow it down. No issues other that a bit of smoke from hot brakes.

Better than being in plane (landing or taking off) hitting a fire truck which is crossing a runway without proper coordination.

Not an FAA issue. It's an airport management issue.