Narrative:

The whole area was busy and as usual with not enough people to work the sectors as needed. I had just come back from a break and was told to work the d-side (radar assist) on a high altitude sector. I helped out there for a few minutes before I was told to go work the d-side on a different sector due to an emergency. I plugged in and right away heard the pilot say that his back window was broken out and he wanted to land at ict. He stated that he was not in an emergency situation and did not need equipment on the ground. Since he was turning to ict; we started the hand off to approach. I called approach and told them that 'his back window was broken out; pilot stated that he was not in an emergency situation and did not need equipment on the ground but we were treating him as an emergency. Let us know when he is one the ground.' shortly after that the pilots' communications were transferred to approach. A few minutes later I was told to go work the d-side on another sector. It was not until two days later that I learned that the pilot had flown into turbulence and that caused the broken window. I was sent to a sector to help with an emergency and that's what I did. There was no time to call the radar controller for a sector briefing before coordination needed to be done on the aircraft.our low sectors are routinely run too busy. There are 9 VHF frequency and 9 UHF frequencies to manage. Pilots are always stepping on each other. It's a lot of airspace to work and a lot of advance low altitude traffic to work. These sectors should be split out a lot more that they are. Due to low staffing numbers we are forced to work busy sectors without help and in this case; work two of the most complex sectors combined up.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZKC Controller reported they did not properly coordinate a priority aircraft due to not receiving a sector briefing.

Narrative: The whole area was busy and as usual with not enough people to work the sectors as needed. I had just come back from a break and was told to work the d-side (Radar Assist) on a high altitude sector. I helped out there for a few minutes before I was told to go work the d-side on a different sector due to an emergency. I plugged in and right away heard the pilot say that his back window was broken out and he wanted to land at ICT. He stated that he was not in an emergency situation and did not need equipment on the ground. Since he was turning to ICT; we started the hand off to Approach. I called Approach and told them that 'his back window was broken out; pilot stated that he was not in an emergency situation and did not need equipment on the ground but we were treating him as an emergency. Let us know when he is one the ground.' Shortly after that the pilots' communications were transferred to Approach. A few minutes later I was told to go work the d-side on another sector. It was not until two days later that I learned that the pilot had flown into turbulence and that caused the broken window. I was sent to a sector to help with an emergency and that's what I did. There was no time to call the radar controller for a sector briefing before coordination needed to be done on the aircraft.Our low sectors are routinely run too busy. There are 9 VHF frequency and 9 UHF frequencies to manage. Pilots are always stepping on each other. It's a lot of airspace to work and a lot of advance low altitude traffic to work. These sectors should be split out a lot more that they are. Due to low staffing numbers we are forced to work busy sectors without help and in this case; work two of the most complex sectors combined up.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.