AircraftOwner Online

There was a time when aircraft accidents were most likely fatal. Though too many fatalities still occur, advances in aircraft technology have greatly increased survivability. Now, a crucial safety issue could be post-impact survival. As we saw in the Aug. 9, 2010, accident that killed former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and four others, locating the wreckage and getting first responders on site took almost seven hours. Alaska has lots of remote terrain, but you don’t have to be very far from a major city in the lower 48 to find that weather, terrain, or a number of other factors could delay rescue and leave you to fend for yourself and your passengers until help arrives.

It’s All about Preparedness

What can you do? That’s where the Office of Aerospace Medicine’s Airman Education Program comes in with its specialized training and resources. A basic survival training course, conducted at the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) in Oklahoma City, Okla., covers survival in desert, arctic, and water environments. CAMI instructors provide two perspectives: how to prepare before the flight and the skills needed to endure environmental extremes.

The one-day course includes discussion of the psychology of survival, aircraft egress, search-and-rescue operations, signaling devices, fire starting/ building, personal survival kits, rafts and accessories, and helicopter pickup devices. Better still, there is a hands-on portion that, depending on availability of personnel/equipment, may include a fire-starting lab, signaling lab, thermal (cold) chamber, ditching tank, underwater egress trainer, and an aircraft emergency evacuation (smoke) simulator. In short, the course gives general aviation pilots and their passengers a thorough grounding in preparing for survival both before and after an aircraft accident.

Know Thyself

CAMI also offers a class on aerospace physiology. This one-day training session includes such topics as physics of the atmosphere, respiration and circulation, decompression, stress, hypoxia, and hyperventilation, among others. In addition to the basic academic contents, this course offers practical demonstrations of rapid decompression (8,000 to 18,000 feet AGL) and hypoxia (25,000 feet AGL) using an altitude chamber. It also includes a demonstration of vertigo, using a spatial disorientation demonstrator.

Each year, CAMI offers more than 170 classes to more than 2,000 people. In addition, the Airman Education Program staff members are working to launch online courses based on the training materials. In the future, this will enable everyone to have access to the courses on www.FAASafety.gov and pilots will be able to get credit in the WINGS pilot proficiency program.

If you cannot make it to Oklahoma, you can still benefit from the information. The FAA has an online library of videos on survival training, aerospace physiology, human factors, and more at: www.faa.gov/pilots/training/airman_education/.

Lastly, one of the best things about all this training, whether in person or online, is that it is free. Whether you come to CAMI in person or visit the Web site, there are resources available. Check it out. You will be glad you did.

Frederick E. Tilton, M.D., M.P.H., received both an M.S. and a M.D. degree from the University of New Mexico and an M.P.H. from the University of Texas. During a 26-year career with the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Tilton logged more than 4,000 hours as a command pilot and senior flight surgeon flying a variety of aircraft. He currently flies the Cessna Citation 560 XL.

     Sometimes you find reminders and lessons in the natural world which provide lessons or reminders for you in your own life. Such was the case with me and a family of Robins just last month.

    The Robins have found the prefect place to build their hangar home on a protected ledge on the front porch of our house. I enjoyed watching the hangar construction progress and subsequent growth and development of four new flyers. They began their flight training just two weeks after hatching. This set me to pondering just how much flight training was necessary as a percentage of their life expectancy.

    My curiosity thusly piqued, I began my research. Turns out, the life expectancy of your typical Robin is roughly 6 years (in case you are curious, the oldest know wild Robin lived nearly 14 years). The flight training for the fledgling Robins on my porch was just under two weeks. That was from their first solo until they did a self checked out and left the hangar area for good.

    Assuming the average American has a life expectancy of 80 years, converting the Robin-to-human years, the fledgling pilots’ training took the human equivalent of just under six months – a surprisingly comparable number – and those Robins were born to fly. Six months is a very reasonable time period to earn a private pilot’s license so it seems we were also born to fly.

    After coming to that conclusion, I also came to the realization that once a Robin solos, practice comes pretty much automatically. Flying around the yard, they reminded me that the summer flying season is here – and that I needed to get out and do some practicing myself.

    So, this weekend was dedicated to getting some practice and training in preparation for some serious flying I plan to do this summer. I pulled three aircraft out of the hangar and dedicated Saturday, Sunday and Monday to flying. Saturday was tail dragger day with several hours of flying in the Fairchild PT-23. This included numerous landings in crosswinds on both grass and concrete. After that, I could not resist pulling out another PT for some fun flying with my
wife Suzanne, and fellow pilot’s Jim Obowa and Paul Hodapp.

    That Sunday, I pulled the Husky on amphibs out and did takeoffs and landings on several lakes and a fast running river. This practice also included docking, sailing, step taxing, turning on the water in the wind and the like. On Memorial Day, I was ready for some serious training.

    Last month, while the Robins were growing, I purchased a used Beech Barron. My good friend and veteran flight instructor, Nickoli Pontecorvo has just come up from Key West to ANE on a ferry flight. Nick has thousands of hours in the Baron and agreed to give me a day of dual and a checkout, including my BFR and Instrument Proficiency Check in the Baron. It went well, but with Nick running me through the ringer, I sometimes felt like one of those newbie Robins flapping around in the air.

    If you fly several different types you know how important it is to be competent in each of them. Systems vary, techniques vary and knowing how to finesse each one also varies. The only way to stay up to speed is to get out and fly the aircraft and be constantly practicing. I would also be remiss if I didn’t add – and use a checklist. Everyone forgets something now and then and it is no different in the cockpit.

    Every summer I pledge to do at least as much flying, if not more, than the summer before. This summer is no exception. I hope to get to more fly-ins and more aviation events than ever. Hopefully I will get to see you there. In the mean time, let’s get out there, practice our techniques and fly somewhere – there are only so many Robin years to go!

The FAA is now considering new rules for regional airline pilots in regards to training as well as duty time. Duty time is something we do not think about very often in our bug smashers but we should.

I flew an IFR flight the other day which only lasted three hours. However, I was at the hangar preparing the flight plan, doing some minor maintenance, and cleaning things up for about six hours before takeoff. The result was doing a hard, night, IFR approach to an unfamiliar airport after being “on duty” for about nine hours.

No one was watching my “duty time” nor had I paid much attention but I was sure glad there was someone else with me to drive the three hours from the airport to our final destination.

There are multiple studies which show that fatigue affects performance and increases accident rates. Fatigue is difficult to measure and there are multiple variables which add to its effects such as hunger, thirst, stress, pain (e.g. that low back ache), or distractions. Unfortunately, the National Transportation Safety Board does not worry too much about small plane accidents and takes the easy way out attributing fatal accidents to the generalized “pilot error” cache. But how many of those accidents might be related to fatigue. We will never know without cockpit and data recorders.

We need to be self vigilant and monitor our own “duty time.” Are we fit to fly and by extension, will we be fit to land at the end of our flight?

The problem is accentuated by the demographics of the pilot population. We all are getting older. One of the most common problems brought to the attention of physicians by “older” patients is sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances create fatigue and somnolence which is accentuated by advancing age.

Naps are good—just not while you are flying by yourself. In fact, sharing flying duties is a great way to reduce the effects of fatigue. Also, being more cognizant of scheduling is important. Do you really need to fly home after an exhausting all day meeting? Waiting till the next morning might may all the difference in the world.

What about drugs to help with getting to sleep, staying asleep, or to adjust sleep cycles to times zones? In a word, very simply, NO!

There are many problems with sleep medications whether they are over the counter (OTC) or prescription. First and foremost, they all are addicting. If you use any sleep medication for three days in a row whether it is Benadryl® OTC or prescription Ambien®, you will not sleep the next night. (Many pharmaceutical companies are allowed to say their medication is not “addicting” by FAA standards, however, that is only because insomnia is not a “withdrawal” symptom.)

More importantly, the metabolic breakdown products of these medications will affect daytime performance and wakefulness. Chemical metabolites also accumulate with chronic use and can cause other symptoms such as irritability and depression.

High carbohydrate meals will also accentuate fatigue. Generally, the carbohydrate load will increase wakefulness as blood sugar rises but this is short lived as fatigue returns with the rapid decrease in blood sugar that is associated with the insulin response. This rapid fall in blood sugar can be mitigated by making sure the preflight meal has significant protein content.

Dehydration increases fatigue as well as other problems. Drinking fluids on long flights, particularly at higher altitudes and pressurized environments, is very important for a variety of reasons. If you are worried about having to urinate in the aircraft, grab some “TravelJohns”. They are inexpensive, single use urinals which turn the urine into gel preventing spills and ensuring order.

The bottom line is that we all should be acting as our own dispatchers. We need to take into account all our physiologic factors when preparing for and making flight decisions.