I’m used to seeing the red flag in VRS for a few seconds. But this aircraft has evidently squawked 7777 for several minutes. Anyone have any more info?
No. Just saw an ERJ Jfk to jfk. Headed to Montreal I think.
Did you mean 7700? 7777 is military intercept.
Yes. That’s what I meant.
Hi @jepolch,
My guess would be a possible pressurization issue, and they squawked 7700 while descending to a lower altitude before they could get full ATC coordination.
A FR24 replay shows the aircraft at around 17,000’. It goes red (indicating 7700) and starts an immediate descent to 6,000’. Once stable at 6,000’, the red goes off, indicating it was no longer squawking 7700. The descent was fairly shallow, so they likely had an issue, but not a complete loss of pressurization.
Normally a depressurization and immediate descent would just be done with a single ATC controller over voice. Possibly due to overlapping airspace, the aircraft was asked to squawk 7700 to make the descent very obvious to all other controllers in the area, before other means of comm were used to coordinate. No, I didn’t look that closely at the local airspace.
That’s just a guess.
Regards,
-Dan
I have recognized over the years that this was mainly either a false signal or the crew did some mistake using the squawk while setting it.
Once i see this, i always do a reference check on other sites
2 Likes