Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine; Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 30; Flight Crew Total 3000; Flight Crew Type 450
Confusion; Training / Qualification; Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Other / Unknown
Air Traffic Control Issued Advisory / Alert
Human Factors
Practicing emergency landings at the airport and had so informed Tower. To facilitate; they agreed to work with us to clear landing on any one of the four runways available; traffic permitting. After doing about 4 of these on different runways; and calling Tower to ask for clearance to turn back; I quipped that I appreciated them letting us land on all these different runways given all the trouble we were having with our pesky engine that day (referring to all the emergency landings we were simulating). They inquired; are you having engine trouble? And we immediately said no; we were making a quip given the repeated practice emergency landings we had discussed with them. They said OK; but be careful with that; we're all on tape. So the lesson is; even if you think Tower knows what is going on (here; practice emergency landings); there is zero room to make a quip about an emergency unless it's the real thing. Stick to business in transmissions; nothing else. Lesson learned.
J-3 Cub instructor providing training in emergency landings was admonished by the Local Controller for making a remark in jest about having engine problems.