Unresponsive plane flying south

[ViperRed91GT]

Ugh...In the moder world of TCAS, TAWS, etc...This is not likely to happen. VFR airplanes fly around all the time without getting a clearance from ATC to climb, descend, turn, land, takeoff...

I agree with your thought process.. Pilot should've just deviated on his own, as this is specifically allowed during emergencies. Your VFR argument is pretty week, however.. Because VFR doesn't exist at FL250.

 

[ViperRed91GT]

No reason they shouldn't have been able to descend to below 10k. Flying that high he was on an IFR flight plan, and even if he was not on an airway/official route, and flying on the east coast, he would have had substantial terrain clearance. An OROCA on an off route flight plan gives you what, 2000 ft of terrain clearance in a mountainous area? No mountains on the east coast come close to 8k feet so he had the terrain clearance. Sadly when you become hypoxic you lose the judgement that would make you declare an emergency and descend without clearance to a safe altitude. I've sen a few videos of hypoxia training and heard ATC recordings of hypoxic pilots when I was in flight school. Scary stuff.

Exactly. Denial is a symptom of hypoxia, further complicating the issue. Not sure where you went to flight school, but we had a chance to fly a simulation (Microsoft flight simulator) while wearing a mask to simulate oxygen, while others would simply write things down while wearing the mask. The flying became horrible and the words became scribbles, and no one realized it until we took the mask off and recovered.

 

[redfiresvtsnake]

Exactly. Denial is a symptom of hypoxia, further complicating the issue. Not sure where you went to flight school, but we had a chance to fly a simulation (Microsoft flight simulator) while wearing a mask to simulate oxygen, while others would simply write things down while wearing the mask. The flying became horrible and the words became scribbles, and no one realized it until we took the mask off and recovered.

I went to a rotary wing civilian flight school. We watched a video of Air Force pilots doing hypoxia training in a pressure chamber. The pilot in the video became silly and crazy. The guy with a mask on told him, "if you dont put on your mask now you will die", and the guy had no clue what to do or what was going on. Crazy stuff. Good thing 99% of helicopter flights are at altitudes where hypoxia is not a factor.

 

[ViperRed91GT]

I went to a rotary wing civilian flight school. We watched a video of Air Force pilots doing hypoxia training in a pressure chamber. The pilot in the video became silly and crazy. The guy with a mask on told him, "if you dont put on your mask now you will die", and the guy had no clue what to do or what was going on. Crazy stuff. Good thing 99% of helicopter flights are at altitudes where hypoxia is not a factor.

Good stuff. I went to Fort Rucker for rotary wing as well. Afghanistan changed a lot for me. We didn't fly at altitudes where hypoxia was a factor (10,000'+), but if we were to go IIMC, the climb to altitude was 19,000'. We carried oxygen for emergencies, but didn't have any available for the passengers.

 

[zak88lx]

Here's audio from a separate incident showing the effects of hypoxia on a pilot.
ATC finally figured out that he had hypoxia, and were able to get him down to a safe altitude, but it's scary to see how long that took them.

[video]http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b97_1409965702[/video]

 

[CobraBob]

^^^ Wow, that is scary. Thankfully this pilot corrected and survived. Sad about the couple who were killed in the crash.