United Airline Pilots Dies In Flight

Wow...when was the last time a part 121 had a real by-God pilot incapaciation issue that lead resulted in death?
 
JeffDG said:
Wow...when was the last time a part 121 had a real by-God pilot incapaciation issue that lead resulted in death?
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I can't remember any. I certainly don't keep track, but it is as rare as hen's teeth.
 
Kind of curious for the heavy-iron drivers.

Do you practice single-pilot ops in the sims? I know a lot of training goes into acting as a crew...but being able to act alone, like in this situation, is a critical skill too.
 
Yes, for biz-jets anyway. Pilot incapacitation is part of the training. Usually more for co-pilots, but both sides get some single-pilot. We don't kill the guy, however, to prevent excess celebration by the copilot. Instead we just say he "temporarily passed out."

work
JeffDG said:
Kind of curious for the heavy-iron drivers.

Do you practice single-pilot ops in the sims? I know a lot of training goes into acting as a crew...but being able to act alone, like in this situation, is a critical skill too.
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JeffDG said:
Wow...when was the last time a part 121 had a real by-God pilot incapaciation issue that lead resulted in death?
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Pretty sure there was a Continental flight coming from Europe to Newark a few years ago where the captain was incapacitated. Pretty sure he died. I remember because I thought of my neighbor when I heard on the news. When I asked him later about it he said he was waiting for that particular airplane because he had the next flight in it and took it to Asia.
 
And this is why the class 3 medical should go away. They can't even predict if for class 1 holders.
 
stratobee said:
And this is why the class 3 medical should go away. They can't even predict if for class 1 holders.
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You need to think like a politician or bureaucrat. This event could be used as justification for more regulation, not less.
 
wsuffa said:
You need to think like a politician or bureaucrat. This event could be used as justification for more regulation, not less.
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You're right - we should require EKG's to be run before the pilot departs on the first flight of each day. Somebody will surely suggest that in Congress in front of the TV cameras...

Or we could just put a second pilot in the cockpit to take over...:mad2:
 
There was at least one I recall where a GA pilot got called up to the flight deck to take on copilot duties. But yeah, quite rare. Not all that common in GA either, despite how old we're all getting.
 
I heard on the news this morning (consider the source) that there was an off-duty pilot deadheading on the flight who filled the second seat up front.

Condolences for the pilot and his family.
 
steingar said:
There was at least one I recall where a GA pilot got called up to the flight deck to take on copilot duties. But yeah, quite rare. Not all that common in GA either, despite how old we're all getting.
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Speak for yourself. Oh, wait... never mind.
 
Very sad, my condolences to the family.

I wonder though, as the story (news reports being completely accurate and all) describes chest compressions being done. Does UAL carry AEDs on their flights? While certainly no guarantee, they are a much better option than just CPR. (Yes, I'm 1st Aid/CPR/AED trained).
 
I don't know if the medical kit is 100% standardized across all types and routes, but the one time I've seen the insides of one (3 or so years ago) there was an AED in there. This was on a United 777 on a trans-Atlantic route.
 
steingar said:
There was at least one I recall where a GA pilot got called up to the flight deck to take on copilot duties. But yeah, quite rare. Not all that common in GA either, despite how old we're all getting.
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That was in Air Plane the movie .
 
wabower said:
Yes, for biz-jets anyway. Pilot incapacitation is part of the training. Usually more for co-pilots, but both sides get some single-pilot. We don't kill the guy, however, to prevent excess celebration by the copilot. Instead we just say he "temporarily passed out."
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..with a knife in his back...:D
 
livitup said:
I don't know if the medical kit is 100% standardized across all types and routes, but the one time I've seen the insides of one (3 or so years ago) there was an AED in there. This was on a United 777 on a trans-Atlantic route.
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I see the AED stickers on pretty much every flight I've been on in the last few years. However, they are not universally effective for a heart attack. If the AED does not sense a condition where it is useful, it does nothing because it will have no effect. I ran a wedding charter to Catalina once where grandpa dropped on the deck clutching his chest mid channel. We did CPR on him until CG could get a boat to us (couldn't helicopter extract due to wind and the sailing rig) which was over an hour. ER doc we talked to said "Good effort, but he was dead before he hit the deck".
 
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Everskyward said:
Pretty sure there was a Continental flight coming from Europe to Newark a few years ago where the captain was incapacitated. Pretty sure he died. I remember because I thought of my neighbor when I heard on the news. When I asked him later about it he said he was waiting for that particular airplane because he had the next flight in it and took it to Asia.
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That was in 2009. Continental also had another pilot suffer a heart attack out of Houston to Mexico in 2007 (emergency landing in McAllen, TX).
 
Speaking as someone who flies airliners for a living, I can't imagine any pilot having trouble bringing his/her plane down single pilot.



btw, the pilot that died was very highly regarded amongst us. A true pilot's pilot. Tailwinds.
 
One of the articles I could find gave his age as 63. Puts him right into the first cohort of pilots who benefited from the revision of the retirement rules.
 
steingar said:
There was at least one I recall where a GA pilot got called up to the flight deck to take on copilot duties. But yeah, quite rare. Not all that common in GA either, despite how old we're all getting.
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Ted Stryker? It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether.

Remember the UA 232 flight? The pilot actually flying that plane was an non-revving instructor pilot that came up to the cockpit to help.
 
Katamarino said:
What does it caution you against?
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Not to have retirement aged pilots fly business jets or turboprops single pilot (and not to pair them up with IOE noobs as IP on a regional).
One of my more senior partners, when he flies with pax in the back will only do so if his wife can ride up front with him. She has spent some time with an instructor and knows how to land the thing.
 
How old was the King Air pilot who died while in enroute in Florida? I don't remember any others.

weilke said:
Not to have retirement aged pilots fly business jets or turboprops single pilot (and not to pair them up with IOE noobs as IP on a regional).
One of my more senior partners, when he flies with pax in the back will only do so if his wife can ride up front with him. She has spent some time with an instructor and knows how to land the thing.
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Katamarino said:
What does it caution you against?
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1)Workaholism and 2)uni-dimensional of self-image.

In other words, the dependency to the idea (whether economic or psychological) of working full-time past ones 50s, especially in physiologically complex/demanding vocations. Secondly, falling into the trap of forming one's self-image as a singularly coupled function of one's vocation. Croaking at work at 63 and croaking at 35 are fundamentally different outcomes in this regard.

My father makes a good analogy when he used to give me life advice as a youth by suggesting the concept of "life stages"/"life balance". There certainly is no science to them, but they exist. "Life balance" doesn't tolerate overt skipping of stages nor extraneous arresting of succession in said stages. Which is to say, learning to take the spurs off is just as important a life skill in terms of life stage and life balance as throwing yourself full-steam ahead in anything you pursue in life is. Croaking at 63 behind the yoke of an airliner seems woefully unbalanced to me. So much so it is antithetical to my life motivators. Hence a cautionary tale.

But hey, to each their own.
 
wabower said:
How old was the King Air pilot who died while in enroute in Florida? I don't remember any others.
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The only article I could find that mentioned his age was readers digest fwiw. They stated that he was a 67 year old retired AF colonel.
 
Just for illustration, here is the graph out of a british medical journal article on incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer over age. It is normalized for '100k person years' which eliminates the fact that people die off as they get older reducing the size of the population at risk (which makes absolute or 'per person' rates not very meaningful).
Driver, JA Djousse, L BMJ 2008;337:a2467

Now, this graph is for 'major cardiovascular disease' and not for 'sudden disabling event', but must cases of sudden death are cardivascular in nature (arrythmias, mycardial infarction). The rest tend to be neurological, mostly head-bleeds (which to some extent are the result of major cardiovascular disease).

When the decision was made to bump up the mandatory retirement age, the argument was 'that we know so much more than we did when the age was lowered'. I am not sure that that is true for the incidence of sudden incapacitating cardiac events.

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This is a slide-set from AHA.

http://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@sop/@smd/documents/downloadable/ucm_319574.pdf

I'll just quote a couple of lines from the slide set:

The average annual rates of first cardiovascular events rise from 3 per 1000 men at 35 to 44 years of age to 74 per 1000 men at 85 to 94 years of age. For women, comparable rates occur 10 years later in life. The gap narrows with advancing age.


For the 60–79-year-old age group, the following have CHD: 21.1% of men; 10.6% of women.
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- Average age of first heart attack is 64.7 years for men and 72.2 years for women.
- About 80% of people who die of CHD are age 65 or older.
 
Knowing that the time would come when the questions started to arise, I headed it off by pulling back well before 70, but with no pressure to continue earning any part of a living by flying airplanes. If we had needed the dough, not sure my decision would have been the same.
 
Rex Kramer said:
Speaking as someone who flies airliners for a living, I can't imagine any pilot having trouble bringing his/her plane down single pilot.
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Bringing a plane down solo isn't a problem.

Being able to use it again, THAT'S the problem.

There's a YouTube vid showing an untrained woman in a B737 sim, following "radio" instructions, who lands on autopilot.
 
SoloEqs said:
Bringing a plane down solo isn't a problem.

Being able to use it again, THAT'S the problem.

There's a YouTube vid showing an untrained woman in a B737 sim, following "radio" instructions, who lands on autopilot.
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I was referring to the other trained pilot that was sitting in the cockpit, not someone who has never flown a 737 before.
 
United Airline Pilots Dies In Flight
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Maybe I missed it (I'm a man and can't find milk in the frig afterall) but I haven't seen anyone take issue with this thread title.

The pilot didn't die in flight. He died afterwards in a hospital.
 
timwinters said:
Maybe I missed it (I'm a man and can't find milk in the frig afterall) but I haven't seen anyone take issue with this thread title.

The pilot didn't die in flight. He died afterwards in a hospital.
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That is often a technicality because until he gets to the hospital and someone qualified to declare him dead does so, he's not officially dead.
 
Henning said:
That is often a technicality because until he gets to the hospital and someone qualified to declare him dead does so, he's not officially dead.
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"He died a short time later while being treated at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, spokeswoman Jennifer Krajnik said."

Dead men aren't typically treated at the hospital, are they?
 
I've heard that no one technically dies 'in flight', they have to be declared dead by some official - possibly at a hospital.

When I used to maintain my CPR cert, I was always told that in a real heart attack CPR won't usually do any good.
 
timwinters said:
"He died a short time later while being treated at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, spokeswoman Jennifer Krajnik said."

Dead men aren't typically treated at the hospital, are they?
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They aren't 'dead' until all attempts at reviving are complete and the attending physician pronounces them dead. Like Grandpa on the charter, the ER still worked on him before pronouncing.
 
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