Procedure for an emergency

[poolep]

My apologies if this is listed elsewhere - I couldn't find it.

I've just completed my 34th FS Captain flight.  I had an engine failure.  I used the FSDU to declare an emergency.  I received a message from the dispatch office - but I'm not sure if I could read it.  Normally when a message is waiting the "msgs" appears in orange/yellow at the right hand side.  This I had, but when I pressed the MSGS button - but nothing happened and the orange "msgs" never disappeared.

Anyway, I tried to land but crashed.

Should I have used the "Divert" option first - before declaring an emergency?  Once you declare an emergency, what happens next?  This seems to be missing from any documention.

[peter]

Hi Poolep,

You can find information on emergencies on p. 58 of the user guide. In short, you can always declare an emergency and try to land somewhere (no diversion required). If you are successful, you get bonus points depending on the emergency that FSCaptain has detected (this could be zero if FSCaptain thinks there was no reason for an emergency). If you crash without having declared an emergency first, it's gonna cost you dearly

Cheers,
Peter

[Travis]

Hi Poolep,

That message you've encountered really bothers me - it's nothing more than your Dispatch Office saying "Good luck" but we freeze the display once an emergency has been declared, so "good luck in reading that message!"

It's on my list of things to change - I don't mind flashing that message for a few moments and then returning to the boring old Emergency screen, so this will happen one day.

---

What Peter said about your duties post emergency - land safely, anywhere that you can!

One important thing that I want to change here is to make the landing speed (the vertical component) depend on the surface type beneath you when you touch down. You don't normally want to park a Boeing in the middle of a cow pasture, but in an emergency... needs must when the devil drives. Still though, making a touchdown at 50fps versus 700fps onto soft ground should award some type of bonus.  (Or contra, some damage.)

Sigh - I really wish there were a way to detect an aircraft's position vis-à-vis any "vector" data, such as a road. So if you were to touch down in the boonies, but we could detect a road / highway within a hundred feet or so... we could deem you to have landed on a hard surface - etc.