Emergency squawk codes

[Markb]

Hi All.

I have alerts set on PlanePlotter for aircraft squawking 7500, 7600 or 7700.
I receive alerts daily, often more than once for these. I know when I used to fly, you never adjusted the transponder in such a way that you inadvertently "roll through" any of these codes, since it will set off an alert with ATC. Are there really that many instances of sloppy airmanship? Those can't all be legit emergencies.

 

[Jay911]

When I was running my AirNav RadarBox, I only ever saw 7xxx series codes from over the UK and Europe. Never in my area even when I knew of aircraft in emergency situations, and never from anywhere except over British/French airspace.

 

[Markb]

Most of them are Mode-C, so I can't tell the type of aircraft, but I just had this guy show up:
[NoPos]:
ADS: A18149 REG: N1963U FLT: ALT: 900 RCT: 2012-10-18 22:25:35 TYP: C172 SQK: 7600
[ 10/18/2012 @ 3:26:23 PM ]

Which finally prompted me to post the question. Jay, are you saying that A/C are transiting the Atlantic squawking one of the 3 emergency codes?

 

[Jay911]

No, most of the ones that I saw were, if not over Great Britain itself, over the North Sea/English Channel or on the coasts of the respective countries (France, Netherlands, etc).

 

[Markb]

Okay. I'm leaning towards all of them being accidental. I don't recall ever being able to correlate an inflight emergency with the applicable squawk. I could see a NORDO aircraft squawk (7600) being the only one used with any "regularity".

Mark

 

[autovon]

Seems strange you are hearing those fairly often. I would think someone would dial the 'big three' in by mistake every so often, but not every day. In my overseas flying, we've been assigned 7xxx codes before. Trying to recall if it has ever happened stateside. Many of the newer transponders you just dial in the squawk on a keypad. Not like the ones where there is a wheel to turn that can accidentally go past 75, 76 or 77. But those are still out there, especially in GA aircraft.

 

[PlanepPlotterUK]

7*** sqwks are not uncommon over the UK.
We often get incoming flights from the Atlantic on 7700 after the long haul has taken its toll on a passenger and the flight is looking for direct routing with medical assistance on landing.
Most of the time the 7*** is cancelled once the emergency has been declared or , the in flight situation has been resolved.

Having said that few are true emergencies.
My alerts log will show a couple a day .... .including 7600 from a/c losing radio , or being asked to send 7600 as an exercise

Over here , more important than the 7*** series codes are the 13** NATO codes which indicate a possible QRA launch/ intercept

 

[Jay911]

I can't say I've been parked at my ANRB screen when a known aircraft in emergency has come in to my local airport, but it has been operational and configured to log/email when a 7x00 comes in. Again, I have never seen local (western Canada) use of 7x00 codes even when the aircraft is in emergency. Maybe it's just Nav Canada policy that they don't bother to change transponder code in such situations.

 

[ColoradoRedlands]

Hi All.

I have alerts set on PlanePlotter for aircraft squawking 7500, 7600 or 7700.
I receive alerts daily, often more than once for these. I know when I used to fly, you never adjusted the transponder in such a way that you inadvertently "roll through" any of these codes, since it will set off an alert with ATC. Are there really that many instances of sloppy airmanship? Those can't all be legit emergencies.

I have a question for you Mark. Are you set to alert on ANY code startingg with 75, 76 or 77? Or are you setting the alert specifically for 7500, 7600 & 7700? The reason I ask is that only "00" is the emergency code. The rest of those code blocks are able to be assigned by ATC in some areas of the US.

 

[Markb]

I have the alerts set for the actual codes.

 

[PlanepPlotterUK]

If you have your own receiver , PlanePlotter will radiate on the emergency codes without the need to set specific alerts , here;s a typical example...

http://i45.tinypic.com/2n66il3.gif

 

[Markb]

I'm using the "Tell Me" add-on to send me email alerts, so that's what I'm referring to.