i’m not even sure how to respond to that. If a person in a control tower sees, hears, smells something that would to him be an emergency situation, he notifies the crash captain, emergency crew, medical crew, whoever of an emergency situation. anything else there to argue about?
In that sense, he can order an emergency for ground crew purposes but for in flight emergency declaration-it is ultimately the Captain’s call. You consider having this discussion an argument? Good grief. I run across so many pilot’s and have dealt with so many controllers that think they are always right. I believed in the old adage that if you are not learning something new on every flight, then you are not paying attention. I can’t tell you how many controllers back down when you say the magic words “Save the tapes”.