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Two Cathay Pacific captains lose eyesight during flights
- i_am_proteus 8y agoThe two incidents were about four weeks apart. Would anyone here happen to have information on the base rate of commercial airliners issuing a pan-pan due to one pilot becoming incapacitated?
- FabHK 8y agoDon't know where to find numbers, but searching AvHerald could give you some qualitative feel for it. Definitely happens quite a bit (no wonder, given how many flights there are per day). http://avherald.com/h?search_term=incapacitated&opt=0&dosearch=1&search.x=0&search.y=0 http://avherald.com/h?search_term=incapacitated&opt=0&dosear... EDIT to add: fortunately, p^2 is quite small for small p. And apparently there are rules in place to prevent both pilots having the fish for dinner. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/555/is-it-true-that-the-pilot-and-co-pilot-are-required-to-eat-different-meals https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/555/is-it-true-... http://www.traveller.com.au/why-pilots-dont-eat-the-same-meals-as-passengers-or-other-pilots-h15uof http://www.traveller.com.au/why-pilots-dont-eat-the-same-mea... EDIT 2: "More recently, a 2010 Civil Aviation Authority report suggested that between 30 and 50 pilots, operating flights to or from a UK airport, are incapacitated at the controls every year – many because of food poisoning." (from the last link above)
- i_am_proteus 8y agoSeems like it's frequently enough (and my assumption is that flights with different crews are generally pretty independent, and largely independent of airline) that "two incidents on one airline in one month" isn't a glaring-alarm-raising-unlikely event.
- neurotech1 8y agoPAN-PAN (urgency) is more common in other countries. In the US, pilots typically "declare an emergency" which can be anything from a engine caution message, to a critical emergency, which would justify a MAYDAY call. Sometimes, pilots will upgrade a PAN-PAN to a MAYDAY if their situation gets worse. One reason for US pilots to only declare an emergency, and not "urgency" is when a pilot requests priority, FAA procedures sometime require Air Traffic Controllers to treat a priority or urgency as an emergency, even if the pilot does not expressly declare the emergency. Almost all airliners require 2 pilots. Unless they have a relief Captain, or fully qualified jumpseat pilot, they have to declare PAN-PAN (urgency) or emergency, when flown by a single rated pilot. The chief flight attendant (pursor) may assist in the cockpit, and frequently does sit in the cockpit seat, when either pilot uses the bathroom.
- pizza 8y agoTIL about the medical certificate system for pilots. I guess I figured there must have been something in place, didn't realize it was a tiered system.
- sokoloff 8y agoThat article might lead a reader towards a wrong conclusion. A first-class medical is required for all air carrier operations. (That they bothered to report that both pilots had a "class 1" medical would be seen as odd to anyone in aviation.) In rough terms, second-class medicals are good for commercial but not air-carrier operations, and third-class medicals (or now, BasicMed) for private aviation.
- not_a_moth 8y agoMakes me think about fume events: http://avherald.com/h?article=4b6eb830&opt=1024 http://avherald.com/h?article=4b6eb830&opt=1024 At a claimed 2,000 events per year, find it a little disturbing that there aren't requirements to monitor air bleed.
- FabHK 8y agoA lot of the fume events are reported by Lufthansa [1]. I strongly suspect that that's not because Lufthansa has more fume events than other airlines, but because they are more scrupulous about reporting them. Thus, 5 events per day might not be implausible. It does seem about time to do something about that. Personally, I'm not a fan of the 787 Dreamliner, but there might be something to the idea of replacing bleed air by a better alternative. [1] http://avherald.com/h?search_term=fumes&opt=0&dosearch=1&search.x=0&search.y=0 http://avherald.com/h?search_term=fumes&opt=0&dosearch=1&sea... EDIT: that ^ search originally only included accidents (missing mere incidents)
- AWildC182 8y agoI've done work in this area. It's really hard to monitor the bleed air because the required equipment is very expensive and degrades fairly rapidly over time due to contamination from random stuff. For example, when you sit behind another airliner waiting, the engine ingests exhaust and that causes lots of (mostly harmless) stuff to enter the bleed air which you then need to worry about getting in your sensor.
- amluto 8y agoMaybe this is a hint that aircraft that are behind other aircraft should recirculate their cabin air instead of adding outside air until they’re somewhere less stinky.
- AWildC182 8y agoI'm willing to bet that would be worse. Try to visualize the amount of air volume per passenger on a fully loaded A321. More than a few minutes of that would probably make the cabin unbearably stuffy.
- sagebird 8y ago"A lower flight level to decrease the cabin pressure altitude was also requested to assist with the captain’s recovery." Doesn't flying lower make the cabin pressure increase?
- AWildC182 8y agoPressure altitude, they describe cabin pressure in terms of apparent altitude, usually 8000ft+/- and by lowering the outside altitude they can increase the internal pressure/decrease apparent altitude.
- sagebird 8y agoI see what you are saying and the article's sentence is technically not wrong. But it is a useless phrasing none the less. By decreasing altitude they decrease apparent altitude... so what? How is that different than saying by filling a glass with water I increase apparent fill level... This is a medical situation so what is relevant is how the change effects the body. So I think the most clear thing to say is that... they flew lower to increase the cabin pressure. Maybe it is some thoughtless force of habit that they chose to describe it that way.
- AWildC182 8y agoYea, the article was a little strange. They were trying to use the technical aviation terminology as much as possible but ended up mixing and matching a bit after apparently realizing explaining all of it would make the article really long.
- mbrameld 8y agoPressure altitude isn't the same as flight altitude. You can decrease flight altitude dramatically without changing cabin pressure altitude. You can also vary cabin pressure altitude without changing flight altitude. So saying they descended to lower the cabin pressure altitude is not useless. It describes the outcome (lower cabin pressure altitude) and how they achieved it (by descending). There are other ways of changing cabin pressure altitude, and there are reasons to descend other than for the purpose of lowering cabin pressure altitude. Edit: I see the "I don't understand this so it must be bad" reaction in a lot of junior devs. It's interesting to see it show up in other areas!
- boznz 8y agoWhy are we using pilots anyway. Autonomous aircraft is a far easier puzzle to solve than cars as the airspace is controlled and drones are mostly doing it already.
- cududa 8y agoBoeing 737 Max MCAS comes to mind...
- astrodust 8y agoMost drones are human piloted with pilot assist features, but very few are "autonomous" beyond standard auto-pilot type systems. To say they're "mostly doing it" is a huge over-statement. Flying in a circle for a few hours is nowhere near the same complexity as common real-world situations like landing at a busy airport with an unpredictable cross-wind.
- boznz 8y agoTotally unsolvable problem then. Glad I am now enlightened
- astrodust 8y agoIt's not totally unsolvable, it's just very hard. Most catastrophic failures were on flights that were 99.99% ordinary. It's that last 0.01% where everything went horribly wrong. We're barely able to make a self-driving vacuum cleaner that doesn't periodically malfunction in a catastrophic way (https://www.scarymommy.com/roomba-meets-pile-of-poop-jesse-newton/ https://www.scarymommy.com/roomba-meets-pile-of-poop-jesse-n...), and self-driving cars at least have the option of stopping when too confused to proceed. Planes are committed from the moment they take off to somehow get back on the ground safely. The clock is running. When a mechanical malfunction occurs that remaining time can get cut dramatically, from hours to minutes, in an instant. It's an enormously complex job to fly a plane even with two human-level intelligences on board. If we have human-level AI it will be easy, but until then it'll be a reach. Drones are a little simpler, but they also have a more complex environment to navigate. Large commercial jets don't need to avoid trees or being attacked by birds. They don't have to worry about falling out of the sky because they clipped a power line they couldn't see. If anything they're easier to fly than a drone if you're concerned about safety. First let's see an autonomous drone work well in a closed environment like a factory or doing drone racing. Then we'll know how hard it is to get out of that safe space.
- whatshisface 8y agoAre passengers at risk from the fumes that are causing pilots to pass out in the cockpit and then die? Are these chemicals present in automotive oils?
- teh_klev 8y agoThere's no mention of fumes being the cause of these incidents in the article.
- AWildC182 8y agoFume events usually mean burning turbine oil which releases a very potent neurotoxin. The smell is usually described as being like wet dirty socks. It's not unusual to smell things in the cabin during taxi though as the bleed air will contain some jet exhaust which is harmless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricresyl_phosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricresyl_phosphate
- mintplant 8y agoWhere does the article mention the pilots dying?
- AWildC182 8y agoNot this article but this has happened http://avherald.com/h?article=4b6eb830&opt=1024 http://avherald.com/h?article=4b6eb830&opt=1024
- crooked-v 8y agoThat page is hardly a reliable source, given that its "evidence" is the existence of pilots who died prematurely of heart conditions and suicides, an anonymous letter scanned from a self-published book, a conveniently unavailable video, a bunch of slides without citations, the presumption that a lack of official information about a supposed previous event (which has all the same hallmarks of non-proof) is proof of a nefarious conspiracy, and a death report that mentions acute myocardial infarction and lethal levels of opioids from which we're somehow supposed to conclude that the actual cause of death was an airborne neurotoxin inhaled 50 days before.
- crooked-v 8y agoThree factors to keep in mind: Pilots, especially international pilots, sit for extremely long periods of time, which is inherently bad for vascular health and makes it difficult to get even the minimal exercise that even office workers get by walking around. Shortness of breath and blurred vision are common symptoms of heart arrythmias and other heart conditions. Cathay Pacific is the world's largest cargo airline and the world's tenth largest airline in terms of sales, so they employ a lot of pilots.
- kalum 8y agoYeah, could this be an example of the law of truly large numbers? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_truly_large_numbers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_truly_large_numbers
- duxup 8y agoIt's also all of two guys, could happen to a small airline... still just two guys. Hard to measure significance.
- hnComfortZone 8y agoHN discussing aviation incidents is often a striking experience. A true demonstration of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. HN has a comfort zone, and aviation is not it. When you skim the comments of an aviation thread, you recognize conversational tactics used in arguments found across other threads, except in an aviation thread, they emerge as profoundly off target, and you see the thrust of the tactic laid bare. It's like a batter whiffing as hard as he can at absolutely no baseball, because there's no one else on the field. At first, you might chalk this up to the plentiful MBA paper tigers that pepper HN's ranks. The bluster of some foolhardy corporate suit, trying to blend in among geeks, where ALL CAPS typing styles simply do not fly. But no. The geeks are bad too. Out of their depth, with the exception of a handful of civil aviation nerds, and their limited coping skills, designed to beg borrow and stealtheir way through a rudimentary weekend flight plan in a single engine tail dragger. It's like watching two high school seniors in a driver's ed class put their heads together, only to make a whole ass out of it. Did he use his blinker? What about gas, maybe they forgot to fill up the tank? You know, tire pressure is important folks! Be sure to drink your ovaltine. Asking open ended questions to karma whore, and feign expertise across all problem domains, because software is that abstract, so it will just generalize to anything within five whys. Dissecting miniscule fragments of the article, to name drop and nerd signal jargon awareness. Only chiming in to wrangle an empty go nowhere comment, neither wrong nor right, and oblique so as to be totally directionless and solicit no replies, part of a see and be seen status play for reputation maintenance. (this one in particular is most frequently used by tough guy crypto and security try hards, in almost every zero day panic parade) You see it in other communities too. And the Gell Mann effect is apt. It's a reason to tune out. Days on end, turning into months, weeks, years of constant jousting and sparring about nothing. Distributed systems. The cloud. Mobile apps. Javascript. And nothing changes. This is the apex. The trajectory, now, is descent.
- emilfihlman 8y agoIs there any possibility of an infrared laser attack?
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y agoFrom where?
- Piskvorrr 8y agoIndeed. Inverse square law would make that a) low-altitude event, or b) high-power beam.
- emilfihlman 8y agoNo, not really. You can easily blind people far away with lasers.
- Piskvorrr 8y agoThat depends of "far away" - good luck trying to aim at something at FL 350, yet it's only some ten clicks away from you.
- emilfihlman 8y agoFrom anywhere close by?
- starpilot 8y agoHN seems to be on an aviation accident kick. Interesting to see how long this trend lasts. There haven't been more events on this impact, they've just been surfacing to the front page more frequently following 737 MAX stores.
- skellera 8y agoProbably because the 737 issues were software related. And the trend of airline news is just up in general because of that whole ordeal. News outlets make articles of things that are currently relevant. It’ll probably slow down soon.
- rconti 8y agoNB: A single flight would have a Captain and a First Officer. Therefore, this is about two Captains on two different flights. Should have been obvious to me on headline reading, wasn't, alarm ensued.
- a3n 8y agoTwo? They were probably caused by a conspiracy theory. I've heard there's a lot of those going around the days.