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Old Geek

Old Geek

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Old Geek
When a normally chatty passenger suddenly goes silent....

Better check on them and be ready to turn back to the airport if you're just sightseeing. I had a passenger nearly lose his lunch with almost no warning.
 
Old Geek said:
When a normally chatty passenger suddenly goes silent....

Better check on them and be ready to turn back to the airport if you're just sightseeing. I had a passenger nearly lose his lunch with almost no warning.
Click to expand...

Also, hand them a barf bag. (And if it's one of the ones in a paper envelope, either tell them to take it out of the envelope, or take it out for them. I found that out the hard way!)
 
The recent Flying Wild Alaska show had pilot Pontz say if any of his passengers throw up - just the smell of their vomit makes him dry heave or throw up too. How stinky is it? I think I should start bringing Ziplocks.... though I don't have Alaska style turbulence.
 
Shoot, I always carry plastic shopping bags with me, out and in reach of passengers for just such an occasion. This is one of those things that you only have to experience once to learn from your mistake.
 
I think I've had three so far on discovery flights. Not too bad for the amount of 'em that I've given here in hot and bumpy South Texas, but it's not fun when it happens.

Ryan
 
Pukers are great. I had a sick captain years ago who started puking on the climb out. We keep a garbage bag hanging off the FO's arm rest that he puked into.

Oddly enough, it smelled just like bubble gum.
 
ugh - I keep a supply of sick-sacks in my flight bag, but have never had to use them. For passengers who haven't flown before, I do make sure to tell them to tell ME if they ever feel woozy. Once it starts, it usually doesn't get better. As long as they know to say something, I hope it helps give them some feeling of control.

--

I was preflighting a rental, and saw another rental parked with the door open. It's not normal to leave the door open like that, so I made a mental note of it as I went into the FBO for one last bathroom break. In there, I saw a CFI wiping off a notebook that normally would stay in the airplane. He was shaking his head mumbling, "Never again." I asked him, "Never again what?" His answer, "Never again will I let a student bring his kids along for a ride. He didn't tell me that they stopped for a big Mexican lunch on the way to the airport."
 
I'm sure everyone knows this, but of you have someone getting woozie, get them to stare at an object that can't move - like a screw on the panel, etc and tell them when they start to feel their mouth water to try and stop it from watering.

If you can keep your mouth from watering, you won't puke.
 
The worst I've ever encountered was on the back of a C-141 with a company of troops. One guy got sick and barfed in his helmet, and that set off a chain reaction. Worst flight I've ever been on. I somehow managed to keep my own lunch to myself.
 
Sac Arrow said:
The worst I've ever encountered was on the back of a C-141 with a company of troops. One guy got sick and barfed in his helmet, and that set off a chain reaction. Worst flight I've ever been on. I somehow managed to keep my own lunch to myself.
Click to expand...

So, you threw up on yourself?
 
BellyUpFish said:
I'm sure everyone knows this, but of you have someone getting woozie, get them to stare at an object that can't move - like a screw on the panel, etc and tell them when they start to feel their mouth water to try and stop it from watering.

If you can keep your mouth from watering, you won't puke.
Click to expand...


Thank you for this. But I just want to know - is air sickness related to turbulence? I have seen turbulence - but - it is not present very often. I wonder what makes people sick, for example, if asking them about car sickness tendencies would be a clue.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Thank you for this. But I just want to know - is air sickness related to turbulence? I have seen turbulence - but - it is not present very often. I wonder what makes people sick, for example, if asking them about car sickness tendencies would be a clue.
Click to expand...

Yes, car sickness tendencies is a big red flag. (Ask me how I know...) ;)

People can technicolor yawn for a lot of reasons. In aircraft it's usually related to the things they're seeing through their eyes not matching what their inner ear (vestibular system, related to how we balance ourselves standing on two legs, etc...). Add that most folks are a little nervous (the old phrase "butterflies in the stomach" when you're close to a "fight or flight" reaction from adrenaline), and you can go from feeling great to tossing cookies, pretty quick.

Also as you start to feel bad, your mind fixates on it. A very common way to break this chain is to give the person something to do. The usual trick for that is, "Here, fly the plane." That can backfire if they're scared, but if they're just feeling badly... it takes their mind off of it and also gives them direct muscle feedback that matches what the world outside the window is doing. They turn the wheel left, the world tilts left, and vice-versa. When you're flying, they don't have that feedback loop and light turbulence mixed with little pilot oscillations trying to smooth it out, are just making them feel worse.

If they're in the back seat, it's harder. Often back-seaters get ill due to really poor rudder skills. Behind the center of gravity they're getting pushed back and forth by Mr. No Rudder Pedal "butt-feel" for side-to-side yaw, and not keeping the ball centered.

My first hurler admitted after we were on the ground at an unplanned airport that I'd tried to make before she lost it, that she can't even ride in cars without feeling bad. She'd gone along to look tough to her boyfriend who was also along. She had frozen pizza for lunch prior to the flight. It smelled like pizza.

I had my second hurler last year, and it was simply because of a mixture of some heavy antibiotics he was taking and a big BBQ lunch. He's a pilot and has never had any issues with airsickness, ever, prior to that day. We did a few T&G's with him as a passenger in the right seat and he whipped out his OWN bag from his flight bag that he keeps in there for his passengers. It smelled, not surprisingly like BBQ.

I'm like Ponce, I'll dry-heave in reaction to another person vomiting pretty easily, so I kept my eyes locked forward and concentrated really really hard on the landing and things going on OUTSIDE the aircraft, while reaching for a vent and pointing it at myself to mask the smell. I didn't heave and we laughed about it a few minutes later, taxiing in. Basically I willed myself to ignore the barfing person in the seat next to me... no peripheral vision "peeking", no watching his motions... just wait for him to go upright again and when I figured he was back on the intercom (yeah, sometimes they barf on the mic, he didn't... had enough sense to flip it up out of the way), I asked if he was okay and while he was "busy" I was working out a full-stop from the tower.

He joked that he felt MUCH better. :) He also said he'd learned a lesson about why the antibiotics said not to operate machinery on the label. If he'd have been PIC or flying at all, he said he'd have been in real trouble. He had just wanted to go for a ride that day since he was self-grounded. Red flag number two... if a pilot is self-grounded enough not to fly and they want to go up... bad idea for a number of reasons. He convinced me he was good to go... and I agreed. Partially my fault.

What will really surprise you is the volume of what will fit in a human's stomach. Those little airline barf bags... not even close. Get the big plastic ones in the little paper pouches, or as someone recommended... a plastic grocery bag with no holes in it. (Those are so lightweight these days, I don't recommend them. Find a thick one.) Also, whatever you get, make sure it has an almost head-sized hole in it... missing the bag is pretty common unless you can just stuff half of your face in it, or more.

He had one of the standard plastic ones that comes in the paper pouch but expands to the size of a small bathroom trash bag once opened... not a drop in the aircraft.

Hurler #1 wasn't so lucky, but I still thank her to this day... she had a t-shirt under a sweatshirt and used the sweatshirt. I couldn't believe she got NOTHING in the aircraft that day, either. Getting her out of the aircraft back seat was... interesting. There were actually four of us on that flight, and my wife stayed with her while the boyfriend and I hopped back in the plane to go get a vehicle, drive to the unplanned airport stop, pick the girls up, and drove home. Glad it happened only about 20nm from home base... I didn't want to make her get back in the airplane, that just seemed like torture. She was REALLY happy when I came up with the plan to go take the airplane back and get the car...

It can happen to anyone, really...
 
I've had passengers start to feel sick, but so far none of them have actually gotten sick!

After my first "almost", i started carrying bags with me just in case.
 
Sac Arrow said:
The worst I've ever encountered was on the back of a C-141 with a company of troops. One guy got sick and barfed in his helmet, and that set off a chain reaction. Worst flight I've ever been on. I somehow managed to keep my own lunch to myself.
Click to expand...

heh - A guy in my glider club was telling me about his episode. He's German, and had to serve a stint in the German army. He and the rest of his unit were on an exercise, in the back of a Chinook. They were supposed to assault an airfield, along with a lot of other helicopters and other guys. It was a windy, turbulent day, and they were doing a lot of low-level flying up and down the hills in the countryside. They finally landed, everyone was covered in barf, then they were told - nevermind, you guys were "shot down" right after takeoff.
 
Sac Arrow said:
The worst I've ever encountered was on the back of a C-141 with a company of troops. One guy got sick and barfed in his helmet, and that set off a chain reaction. Worst flight I've ever been on. I somehow managed to keep my own lunch to myself.
Click to expand...

Yep, had the same thing happen to me on a 141 out of Elmendorf, AK with 100+ Army paratroopers from Fort Richardson on board. It was two hours to the drop zone and we flew at 1000' agl following the contour of the earth. About an hour into it, one guy ralphed, and within 15 minutes, at least fifty had full helmets. Airplane smelled bad! I do admire and respect the Army though. They took it with them when they jumped.
 
I got sick many times during the first 10 hours of my primary training. I've been susceptible to motion sickness in the past. Thankfully I didn't feel ill during my discovery flight because I would probably have given up right there. Most of my primary training was during New England winter which is frequently quite bumpy. We would get up to altitude and do some slow flight and stalls or steep turns and my poor CFI would have to take the controls while I puked into the airsickness bag. Somewhere around hour 8 or 10 it just stopped and I have been in significantly more severe turbulence, done countless stalls and steep turns, and never feel anything. My mind and vestibular system just got used to it (strong ginger beer and ginger candies helped too).

It is not uncommon. Supposedly both Chuck Yaeger and Bob Hoover struggled with airsickness. Since passing my checkride I've yet to have a passenger feel ill. I do keep sic-sacs in my flight bag and the FBO keeps them in rental airplane too.

Tips are to make sure passengers know that they should always let you know ASAP about "environmental issues" like discomfort. When you start to feel airsick opening the overhead vents in a 172 gives a huge blast of nice cool air which really helps. If a passenger says they are feeling ill do what you can to reduce the discomfort. I had a passenger who I knew has felt some airsickness before and she never felt nauseous but when we started descending into bumpy air between two ridgelines I told her "Tell me right away if you feel nauseous because we can just climb back out of the bumpy air". Briefing passengers on how to control the overhead vents helps too, give them control over that aspect of the enviromental controls (I'm reluctant to do that with the cabin air/cabin heat knobs with an unfamiliar passenger since they are right next to the mixture knob...).
 
I had a student ralph during a lesson in a Katana. He tried to get it out the little window in a canopy, but was only partially sucessful. What did make it outside provided a great teaching moment as he cleaned the mess off the side of the cockpit, over the top of the tail and the opposite side of the rudder.

Best graphic of a spiraling slipstream ever!:vomit:
 
I've never been close to getting sick in an airplane but I have the dubious distinction of being the only person ever to make a pilot friend of mine sick. I was a student pilot at the time with only a couple of hours in all logged, one or two lessons. She handed me the controls of her airplane and I proceeded to execute wonderful fughoid oscillations, up a couple hundred feet, then down. I was fat, dumb, and happy, but she soon reported that she was starting to get queasy. She is instrument rated and, like me, doesn't have a problem with being under the hood or in IMC in turbulence. Apparently my vertical PIOs were at just the right frequency to upset her ear-stomach equilibrium. Not a good thing when the only person in the cockpit with the skill to get the airplane safely on the ground is on the verge of incapacitation. Wisely she took the controls back and recovered.
 
My first passenger got sick but didn't puke. She would not admit to being airsick until after the flight. Just went silent and wouldn't tell me anything when I asked what was wrong! I figured she was scared.
 
Another thing I've run into with new passengers - they really don't know what's normal and what isn't.

The first time I took my youngest daughter, she kept quiet even though I kept asking her how she was doing. Afterward, I finally got her to tell me what she thought of the ride. She said it was fun, but cold. Turns out and air vent was blasting right in her face, during the winter, and she kept quiet about it because she thought that was normal.
 
I have perfected the "barf kit." It consists of a heavy duty (not generic) gallon zip-loc bag. Inside you'll find 3-4 paper towels, individually packaged wet wipes, and a couple of sticks of mint gum or strong mints. Mint is fantastic for fighting nausea. Have them chew gum or suck on a mint and then you have the kit just in case. I make it a regular part of my passenger briefing. Just be sure to tell them to remove the contents of the zip-loc before usage. But that's why I have multiple kits. This has saved me more than once in the plane and the van.
 
Only had one (human) puker so far, oddly he was having a blast, asking for steeper turns stalls etc but started to feel ill in the traffic pattern and lost it right at round out. He puked out the window, and most of it ended up on the N number. I had to hang my head out the door to keep from loosing my lunch while taxing in.
 
Those Ziploc bags are awesome. Had a guy with food poisoning a few months ago. Thankfully he did most of his puking at the FBO before we departed, but he still had some more puking to perform after we were airborne.
 
Sac Arrow said:
The worst I've ever encountered was on the back of a C-141 with a company of troops. One guy got sick and barfed in his helmet, and that set off a chain reaction. Worst flight I've ever been on. I somehow managed to keep my own lunch to myself.
Click to expand...

As a former commuter airliner Captain, it's been my experience that airliners are a bit like Jiffy Pop...once one person spits up, the whole airplane will shortly follow.
 
tlglenn said:
Those Ziploc bags are awesome. Had a guy with food poisoning a few months ago. Thankfully he did most of his puking at the FBO before we departed, but he still had some more puking to perform after we were airborne.
Click to expand...

Why did he even go up? Silly.
 
callmesven said:
I have perfected the "barf kit." It consists of a heavy duty (not generic) gallon zip-loc bag. Inside you'll find 3-4 paper towels, individually packaged wet wipes, and a couple of sticks of mint gum or strong mints. Mint is fantastic for fighting nausea. Have them chew gum or suck on a mint and then you have the kit just in case. I make it a regular part of my passenger briefing. Just be sure to tell them to remove the contents of the zip-loc before usage. But that's why I have multiple kits. This has saved me more than once in the plane and the van.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind those "individual packets" of wet naps do dry out in those packages so may want to change them out every other year or so. Or keep one of those canisters in the airplane with a bunch of them..
 
I do sometimes get motion sick - but not nearly as often as I used to. It was a struggle for me when I first started flying. I've thrown up in airplanes three times.

I've had a few people throw up in an airplane - but I can generally recognize it by them getting quiet and get on the ground before it happens. It's not a great feeling - one I know quite well.
 
azure said:
Apparently my vertical PIOs were at just the right frequency to upset her ear-stomach equilibrium. Not a good thing when the only person in the cockpit with the skill to get the airplane safely on the ground is on the verge of incapacitation. Wisely she took the controls back and recovered.
Click to expand...
Back in the last century I served on a nuclear-powered surface ship. One day, standing feed control watch in the engine room, the same conditions occurred--perfect coincidence of amplitude and period of the rocking and rolling.

In the engine room nothing moves--while everything is moving. Eyes vs. Ears. Only time I ever got the least bit queasy. To solve the problem, I grabbed a heavy nut, some twine that was nearby, and hung the nut from a pipe. Now I had at least one thing that was moving while "everything" was not moving/moving. Got the two sensor systems synchronized, as it were.
 
I've never experienced motion sickness of any kind, not on a roller coaster, boat, car or airplane, and I've really tempted fate a few times, including the frog-in-the-blender whirlomatic thing they strap you into to try to induce vertigo. I have been on multi-day offshore excursions where I felt like I was still onboard the boat after reaching shore for some time (feeling like the ground was moving), but never any queasiness. I have, however, seen enough people brought to their knees (occasionally literally) to know it's a very real phenomenon. I don't understand it, but I do respect it, and I keep a couple kits handy in the airplane (gallon ziploc, wetwipes, gum). So far I've been lucky and never had anyone use them, though I've had two close calls.

I'm always very concious of passenger comfort when flying, I'll choose a smooth altitude over a fast one every time, and climb high for cooler temperatures even for a short trip.
 
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I haven't had one puke yet, but I've had several go quiet. If there is one rule that my passengers violate on the reg, it would be 'please tell the pilot if you are getting sick'. I need to make a giant sticker or something to put on the back of my head.

For some reason when people get nauseous, they do not complain. Very strange behavior, a 180 from normal human tendency.
 
Closest I got myself was in Rich Stowell's course. I made it, but after signing my log book he told me to stop on the way home and get some ginger ale, lol. Aerobatic maneuvers with the eyes closed and hands off the stick will do that (extreme upset / spin recovery training). I felt pretty green for a while.
 
I don't get motion sickness at all. Drives my buddy crazy since he owns the
plane and has been a pilot a lot longer than me. He can't ride as a passenger if it gets rough.
He starts to get queasy so I turn the controls
over to him. Once he's doing the flying, he's ok.
Meanwhile I'm sitting there eating potato chips while he's fighting the
turbulence and flying the plane.
"How the hell can you do that!!??" he asked me one time.
I told him, "Shut up and hold it level so I don't spill my soda". LOL!!!!
 
dell30rb said:
For some reason when people get nauseous, they do not complain. Very strange behavior, a 180 from normal human tendency.
Click to expand...

Just normal acceptance-seeking. They don't want to be kicked off the island.

(Probably some very ancient instincts there too. Getting kicked out of the tribe for being ill meant certain death... at the jaws of a predator or worse, of starvation.)
 
If you go for a checkride, ask your DPE for barf stories. They have more than anyone else in aviation.
 
I've had two passengers, and myself get sick.

First was my wife, after taking her and the kids to the Reading aiport for lunch in the C172, it was quite choppy on the flight home and I couldnt seem to find a very good altitude to make it smoother. As we were entering the pattern to home base, Wings, I knew my wife was about to lose it. I quick grabbed the blue bag from the pocket and had her open it. She started to chuck as soon as I keyed the mic to call downwind. By the time the wheels were down she was done, but embarassed that her $11 salad from lunch was now in the bag. Oh,.. and she forgot to move the mic out the way :nono: so,.. there went that foam cover and after a good cleaning and a new one, that headset was back in use.

Second was my mom. On her first flight with my dad and I in the C172SP. Wasn't bumpy, but she was looking down to much taking pictures. I opened up the vents and she felt better for a little while as she relaxed looking forward again. Then, all of a sudden, :vomit:
Just a little at first, then in the bag. She felt horrible and even after an hour on the ground at Blairstown she still was washed out. Of course, the plane wouldn't start, and after calling members of the POA and eventually paying for an instructor to fly another C172SP up the 51nm to jump us, we had a great smooth flight home at sunset. Most expensive 51nm XC in my logbook!

And lastly, was me. I was doing spin training in the Citabria and having a blast. No problems at all, we ended up doing 3 spins left and 3 spins right, with the last ones each way being 5 turn developed spins. Wow, lots of fun. "Hey, before we head back, and since we have the chutes on, let's do a loop for fun." I was fine till we were rounding out the bottom of the loop and the G's started pulling in. Then I didn't feel so hot. NOTHING was in the airplane but us and our chutes,... so I took off my headset and hat, and used my AOPA hat. :mad2: Ah well,... I ordered a new hat later that day at work.
 
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