Narrative:

This event actually involves more than the named aircraft. While I was working this position the warning areas to the south were active sfc-FL500; including W174 F; G. Weather had already been impacting the arrival and continued to push aircraft closer to the warning areas. I was doing what I could to continue taking aircraft and getting them safely through; however when air carrier X approached the area he refused to follow the path that others had been using. I still had some time before he got down near W174 so I asked the flm at the time to see if they could secure some corridor of that airspace back from the military. The response was that FL350 and above would be released back; so I then began reformulating a new reroute through the warning area down to the CURSO2 arrival. Two minutes passed and air carrier X was only 15 or 20 miles north of the warning area; when the flm returned and stated that the military refused the request. At that moment I immediately vectored the aircraft east and began issuing holding instructions at cyy. The flm tried to stop me and told me to have the aircraft squawk code 7700 and let them fly through the warning area. I responded that I was not comfortable doing so and continued to clear aircraft to hold in the vicinity of cyy where I had no real weather. At that time I had hoped to receive alternate routing from flow control; however I received an admonishment from the flm and was told repeatedly to give the aircraft the option to fly through an active warning area. The exchange escalated to a point beyond distraction where I was missing aircraft calls and was clearly upset. After repeated attempts to come up with a resolution; I was to told to reroute three aircraft that I was about to receive from the north over vrb and the HILEY2 arrival. But no guidance was issued regarding the 4 aircraft that were already holding at cyy. A short time later I was relieved from the sector and the new controller was left to his own devices to find a way to get them cleared on to the destination airports. I would really like to get some feedback on the practice of having aircraft squawking emergency as a way to get them through a warning area. I asked the flm in question about this after things settled down and the response was that only a week earlier they had fifteen aircraft do it with out a problem! Am I missing something because I was trained to avoid military airspace and there was never any mention of this procedure in the 7110.65 or anywhere else for that matter. Recommendation; perhaps some type of refresher training for these managers that think that our job doesn't really involve any type of personal responsibility or accountability. We all know that if I had done what they had suggested and the worst had happened; they would have denied that they were involved on any level and I would have been the scapegoat!

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZMA Controller described an event when weather restricted airspace/route availability and the Supervisor instructed the reporter to have the aircraft in question Squawk 7700 and traverse the military airspace.

Narrative: This event actually involves more than the named aircraft. While I was working this position the warning areas to the south were active SFC-FL500; including W174 F; G. Weather had already been impacting the arrival and continued to push aircraft closer to the warning areas. I was doing what I could to continue taking aircraft and getting them safely through; However when Air Carrier X approached the area he refused to follow the path that others had been using. I still had some time before he got down near W174 so I asked the FLM at the time to see if they could secure some corridor of that airspace back from the military. The response was that FL350 and above would be released back; so I then began reformulating a new reroute through the warning area down to the CURSO2 arrival. Two minutes passed and Air Carrier X was only 15 or 20 miles north of the warning area; when the FLM returned and stated that the military refused the request. At that moment I immediately vectored the aircraft east and began issuing holding instructions at CYY. The FLM tried to stop me and told me to have the aircraft Squawk Code 7700 and let them fly through the warning area. I responded that I was not comfortable doing so and continued to clear aircraft to hold in the vicinity of CYY where I had no real weather. At that time I had hoped to receive alternate routing from Flow Control; however I received an admonishment from the FLM and was told repeatedly to give the aircraft the option to fly through an active warning area. The exchange escalated to a point beyond distraction where I was missing aircraft calls and was clearly upset. After repeated attempts to come up with a resolution; I was to told to reroute three aircraft that I was about to receive from the north over VRB and the HILEY2 arrival. But no guidance was issued regarding the 4 aircraft that were already holding at CYY. A short time later I was relieved from the sector and the new controller was left to his own devices to find a way to get them cleared on to the destination airports. I would really like to get some feedback on the practice of having aircraft Squawking emergency as a way to get them through a warning area. I asked the FLM in question about this after things settled down and the response was that only a week earlier they had fifteen aircraft do it with out a problem! Am I missing something because I was trained to avoid military airspace and there was never any mention of this procedure in the 7110.65 or anywhere else for that matter. Recommendation; perhaps some type of refresher training for these managers that think that our job doesn't really involve any type of personal responsibility or accountability. We all know that if I had done what they had suggested and the worst had happened; they would have denied that they were involved on any level and I would have been the scapegoat!

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 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.