Is Your Pilot Drunk?
Nov 12, 2009, 7:12 pm
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Is Your Pilot Drunk?
This week in Patrick Smith's ASK THE PILOT column at Salon.com:
Safety and Silence: An Aviation Milestone Goes Quietly Unnoticed.
Plus, Is Your Pilot Drunk?
On pilots and alcohol:
"…a pilot showing up for duty under the influence isn't going to be held in high esteem by his colleagues. But more importantly, I need to make clear that although this isn't the first time such a thing has happened, it shouldn't give the traveling public the wrong impression. These rare and isolated incidents are not a symptom of some dangerous and unseen crisis. I understand and expect that passengers will worry about all sorts of things, rational and otherwise. But as a rule, whether or not your pilots are intoxicated should not be one of them. My own personal observations are hardly a scientific sample, but I have been flying commercially since 1990 and I have never once been in a cockpit with a pilot I knew or suspected of being intoxicated … Not for nothing, though, Britain's regulations are considerably more strict that those of the FAA. The legal limit is set at 20 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. That's four times the British limit for drunk driving, and equates to about .02 percent blood alcohol level. It's not impossible for a pilot to be in full compliance with the time restriction and not feel any of the typical signs of intoxication, yet still be in violation. "Flying drunk" isn't as clear-cut, or as wildly negligent as it might seem…"
On safety:
"…November 12th marks the 8th anniversary of anniversary of the crash of American Airlines flight 587 near Kennedy airport in New York City -- the last large-scale crash involving a major U.S. airline anywhere in the world.
We've seen a handful of disasters involving regional planes since, but aside from a young boy killed when a Southwest 737 overran a snowy runway in Chicago in 2005, our largest airlines, operating some 10,000 daily flights between them, have been fatality-free. Eight years is a record going back at least to the dawn of the jet age a half-century ago. Here we are amidst what might be called the safest stretch in modern commercial aviation history, but you wouldn't know it listening to the media…
…American 587 was an Airbus A300-600 bound from JFK to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. The plane went down after the first officer, Sten Molin, overreacted to an encounter with wake turbulence spun from a Japan Airlines 747 that had departed moments earlier. The voice and data recorders show that Molin commanded a full deflection of the rudder. Fully deflecting a plane's rudder is somewhat akin to yanking a car's steering wheel 90 degrees, so most larger planes, including this one, are equipped with segmented rudders and automatic limiters, reducing the available rudder travel as speed increases. The faster you're flying, the less available movement. Even had the limiting systems somehow failed, flight 587 was, at the moment of its doom, sufficiently below the speed at which max deflection, intentional or otherwise, should have damaged the structure. Pilots call this "maneuvering speed." Barring any structural anomaly, it seems there was no reason for flight 587's vertical stabilizer to fail.
Except for two things. First, Molin applied maximum pressure rapidly and in both directions, repeatedly swinging the rudder to the left and to the right. A plane's airworthiness certification standards are not based on such unusual, alternating applications of extreme force. Secondly, the A300's rudder controls are unusually sensitive, and resultant movements, even at low speeds, may be more severe than a pilot intends. In other words, Molin didn't realize the level of stress he was putting on the tail. Clearly he overreacted, but he didn't have reason to think his inputs were going to rip the tail off, and he was not the only pilot surprised to learn that full deflections below maneuvering speed, however irregular, are risking structural catastrophe ….
…Flight 587 was well known among New York City's Dominican community. In 1996, merengue star Kinito Mendez paid a sadly foreboding tribute with his song * El Avion. * "How joyful it could be to go on flight 587," he sang, immortalizing the popular daily nonstop…"
History's Ten Worst Aviation Disasters Involving Major US Air Carriers
1. 1977. Two Boeing 747s, operated by Pan Am and KLM, collide on a foggy runway at Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands killing 583 people, 335 of them on the Pan Am plane. The KLM jet departed without permission and struck the Pan Am jet as it taxied along the same runway. Confusion over instructions and a blockage of radio transmissions contributed to the crash
2. 1979. As an American Airlines DC-10 lifts from the runway at Chicago's O'Hare airport, an engine detaches and seriously damages the wing. Before its crew can make sense of the situation, the plane rolls 90 degrees and disintegrates in a fireball beyond the runway, killing 273. The engine pylon design and airline maintenance procedures are faulted by investigators, and all DC-10s are temporarily grounded.
3. 1988. Two Libyan agents are later held responsible for planting a bomb aboard Pan American flight 103, which blows up in the night sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground.
4. 2001. American Airlines 587 goes down outside JFK airport in New York killing 265.
5. 1996. Shortly after departure, a fuel tank explosion destroys TWA flight 800, a 747 carrying 230 passengers and crew from JFK to Paris. There are no survivors.
6. 1995. A navigational error causes American Airlines flight 965, bound from Miami, to Cali, Colombia, to wander off course during arrival. The 757 hits a mountain 25 miles from its destination. There are four survivors of the plane's 163 occupants.
7. 1987. A Northwest Airlines MD-80 crashes on takeoff at Detroit. The pilots had neglected to properly set the flaps and slats, and for reasons unknown the jet's warning system failed to alert them. All 154 people on the plane perish, as do two people hit by the aircraft.
8. 1982. A Pan Am 727 goes down seconds after departing from New Orleans, Louisiana. There are 153 fatalities, including eight people on the ground. The plane had taken off into a rare and deadly microburst -- a localized, high-power windshear produced by a violent thunderstorm.
9. 1978. A Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) 727 collides over San Diego with a small private plane. A total of 143 people die including 7 on the ground.
10. 1985. Delta flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011, crashes in Dallas after encountering a severe microburst on approach to landing. Thirty people survive;137 do not.
The full article is available here:
http://salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009...askthepilot341
Entry to Salon is free.
Recently in ASK THE PILOT: Boredom and Fatigue at 35,000 Feet http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...askthepilot339
Safety and Silence: An Aviation Milestone Goes Quietly Unnoticed.
Plus, Is Your Pilot Drunk?
On pilots and alcohol:
"…a pilot showing up for duty under the influence isn't going to be held in high esteem by his colleagues. But more importantly, I need to make clear that although this isn't the first time such a thing has happened, it shouldn't give the traveling public the wrong impression. These rare and isolated incidents are not a symptom of some dangerous and unseen crisis. I understand and expect that passengers will worry about all sorts of things, rational and otherwise. But as a rule, whether or not your pilots are intoxicated should not be one of them. My own personal observations are hardly a scientific sample, but I have been flying commercially since 1990 and I have never once been in a cockpit with a pilot I knew or suspected of being intoxicated … Not for nothing, though, Britain's regulations are considerably more strict that those of the FAA. The legal limit is set at 20 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. That's four times the British limit for drunk driving, and equates to about .02 percent blood alcohol level. It's not impossible for a pilot to be in full compliance with the time restriction and not feel any of the typical signs of intoxication, yet still be in violation. "Flying drunk" isn't as clear-cut, or as wildly negligent as it might seem…"
On safety:
"…November 12th marks the 8th anniversary of anniversary of the crash of American Airlines flight 587 near Kennedy airport in New York City -- the last large-scale crash involving a major U.S. airline anywhere in the world.
We've seen a handful of disasters involving regional planes since, but aside from a young boy killed when a Southwest 737 overran a snowy runway in Chicago in 2005, our largest airlines, operating some 10,000 daily flights between them, have been fatality-free. Eight years is a record going back at least to the dawn of the jet age a half-century ago. Here we are amidst what might be called the safest stretch in modern commercial aviation history, but you wouldn't know it listening to the media…
…American 587 was an Airbus A300-600 bound from JFK to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. The plane went down after the first officer, Sten Molin, overreacted to an encounter with wake turbulence spun from a Japan Airlines 747 that had departed moments earlier. The voice and data recorders show that Molin commanded a full deflection of the rudder. Fully deflecting a plane's rudder is somewhat akin to yanking a car's steering wheel 90 degrees, so most larger planes, including this one, are equipped with segmented rudders and automatic limiters, reducing the available rudder travel as speed increases. The faster you're flying, the less available movement. Even had the limiting systems somehow failed, flight 587 was, at the moment of its doom, sufficiently below the speed at which max deflection, intentional or otherwise, should have damaged the structure. Pilots call this "maneuvering speed." Barring any structural anomaly, it seems there was no reason for flight 587's vertical stabilizer to fail.
Except for two things. First, Molin applied maximum pressure rapidly and in both directions, repeatedly swinging the rudder to the left and to the right. A plane's airworthiness certification standards are not based on such unusual, alternating applications of extreme force. Secondly, the A300's rudder controls are unusually sensitive, and resultant movements, even at low speeds, may be more severe than a pilot intends. In other words, Molin didn't realize the level of stress he was putting on the tail. Clearly he overreacted, but he didn't have reason to think his inputs were going to rip the tail off, and he was not the only pilot surprised to learn that full deflections below maneuvering speed, however irregular, are risking structural catastrophe ….
…Flight 587 was well known among New York City's Dominican community. In 1996, merengue star Kinito Mendez paid a sadly foreboding tribute with his song * El Avion. * "How joyful it could be to go on flight 587," he sang, immortalizing the popular daily nonstop…"
History's Ten Worst Aviation Disasters Involving Major US Air Carriers
1. 1977. Two Boeing 747s, operated by Pan Am and KLM, collide on a foggy runway at Tenerife, in Spain's Canary Islands killing 583 people, 335 of them on the Pan Am plane. The KLM jet departed without permission and struck the Pan Am jet as it taxied along the same runway. Confusion over instructions and a blockage of radio transmissions contributed to the crash
2. 1979. As an American Airlines DC-10 lifts from the runway at Chicago's O'Hare airport, an engine detaches and seriously damages the wing. Before its crew can make sense of the situation, the plane rolls 90 degrees and disintegrates in a fireball beyond the runway, killing 273. The engine pylon design and airline maintenance procedures are faulted by investigators, and all DC-10s are temporarily grounded.
3. 1988. Two Libyan agents are later held responsible for planting a bomb aboard Pan American flight 103, which blows up in the night sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground.
4. 2001. American Airlines 587 goes down outside JFK airport in New York killing 265.
5. 1996. Shortly after departure, a fuel tank explosion destroys TWA flight 800, a 747 carrying 230 passengers and crew from JFK to Paris. There are no survivors.
6. 1995. A navigational error causes American Airlines flight 965, bound from Miami, to Cali, Colombia, to wander off course during arrival. The 757 hits a mountain 25 miles from its destination. There are four survivors of the plane's 163 occupants.
7. 1987. A Northwest Airlines MD-80 crashes on takeoff at Detroit. The pilots had neglected to properly set the flaps and slats, and for reasons unknown the jet's warning system failed to alert them. All 154 people on the plane perish, as do two people hit by the aircraft.
8. 1982. A Pan Am 727 goes down seconds after departing from New Orleans, Louisiana. There are 153 fatalities, including eight people on the ground. The plane had taken off into a rare and deadly microburst -- a localized, high-power windshear produced by a violent thunderstorm.
9. 1978. A Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) 727 collides over San Diego with a small private plane. A total of 143 people die including 7 on the ground.
10. 1985. Delta flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011, crashes in Dallas after encountering a severe microburst on approach to landing. Thirty people survive;137 do not.
The full article is available here:
http://salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009...askthepilot341
Entry to Salon is free.
Recently in ASK THE PILOT: Boredom and Fatigue at 35,000 Feet http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...askthepilot339
