Flying cancelled due to the flu !

[Memphis_bell]

Yet another day of my hours building cancelled due to the flu !! Ok....so a good excuse to get stuck into my ATPL's ! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz !

Theres a wholeeeeeeeeeee lot os sh#t circulating the skies at the moment..and i am catching it all !

[BackPacker]

Good news. The Olympic Airspace restrictions apply to anything airborne. Including the flu!

[Pace]

Interesting side question? I wonder how many fly with the remnants of a cold or when under the weather?
I think more than would admit it! and also probably dosed with anti congestion tablets.

Pace

[Memphis_bell]

Haha good comment regarding olympic air restrictions and the flue ! Very good ! Well, i feel off-balence and really under the weather...i am definately in no fit state to fly...although i can sure understand that some people would do.

[Pace]

Memphis

Play it by EAR :) Obviously if your not well do not fly but if your with an instructor and do not intend to go high you maybe ok.
A few snap rolls will soon clear the sinuses out :E
High is different I can remember an airways trip to Scotland with the remnants of a cold! Joy my ears cleared all the way up to 10K but on the way down the pain was excruciating especially the last few thousand feet so beware.

Pace

[JW411]

Flying with a Cold:

More years ago than I care to remember I was an Argosy captain based at RAF Benson. I got airborne one morning to go to Malta. About 500 feet after take-off my flight engineer started to scream.

Now I use that word quite carefully; he was screaming.

It is quite unusual for the average man to hear another screaming.

Luckily, he gave me a clue. He was holding his hands over both of his ears.

I levelled off at something less than 500 feet and went a long way downwind. Every time I tried to come down a little bit or go up a little bit, my flight engineer started to scream even louder. I could not stay up there for ever.

I ended up doing the shallowest let down that I have ever done and we got him into hospital before any further damage was done.

Both of his eardrums were stretched to the limit over the bone in his ears.

So any of you out there who think it is even slightly clever to go flying with a cold, I would like you to do yourself (and your family) a great favour and stay away until you are better.

Finally, as an ex-CFI of a gliding club, let me tell you that the pressure change over the first 1,000 feet in the earth's atmosphere if you have a cold is the worst. A winch launch is about the most challenging exercise that you could expose yourself to! Don't do it.

[peterh337]

I avoid flying with a cold. Not only does the brain not work properly but the eustachian tubes get easily blocked. I did it once and one ear got really painful despite my best efforts to clear it, and was painful for several days afterwards. You can probably do serious damage that way.

Having flying lessons / training with a cold is a total waste of money, IME.

[Pace]

JW411

There must have been something wrong with the guy other than a cold?
You can change 500 feet driving over a small hill in a car?
The total pressure of Air column on the surface of the earth is 14.7psi or one atmosphere.
As someone who Scuba dives that equated to every 33 feet down you go in the sea.
The person you had must have also had a severe ear infection to have experienced such severe pain at only 500 feet?

Pace

[maxred]

Well its not flu I currently have, but one of these dreaded cold viruses. Was scheduled to go flying Tuesday, and did not. It was a great day here, and as I looked forlornly upward, feeling like s***, was glad I stayed on the ground.

As well as the symptoms listed above, I find my concentration goes off, and the whole exercise, flying, becomes stressful, the opposite of what it is supposed to do.

Also, is it not noted somewhere, that flying, or driving for that matter, under certain medicines, is very much not advised.

[fisbangwollop]

A build up of pressure inside the ear can occur if the Eustachian tube (the "regulator" tube connecting the inner ear and the nose) does not open to regulate air within the middle ear. Plugged ears cannot only cause pain, they can initiate negative pressure and suction which may result in hearing changes, fluid build up, a feeling of fullness in the ear, and for some - excruciating pain.

Learning how to do the Valsalva maneuver is something every pilot must know how to do to help regulate inner ear pressure with altitude changes. This maneuver as well as yawning or opening and closing the mouth can be all that is needed to help the little Eustachian tube open and regulate the pressure of the middle ear cavity.

[Pace]

JW

I positioned a business Jet in Europe yesterday and had to catch the dreaded RyanAir back to London last night.
In front where a family of six Indian People three with stinking colds!
Are you saying they would be screaming with a Cabin pressure of 500 feet?
That would not take the RyanAir very high!

Pace

[peterh337]

I don't know but I think the rate of cabin pressure change in an airliner is lower than in say a -1000fpm unpressurised descent.

[Memphis_bell]

I dont actually fly with instructos anymore as i'm Hours building - havent done for quite a while. However, i wouldnt fly with anybody in the condition i am in at the mo (some say its man-flu...but i say im dying ! ) haha,

Great input guys - especially as i am doing my ATPL Human Performance studying at the mo !

[Halfbaked_Boy]

I was flying a C172 once, and needed to get down quick (bad planning, ended up too close too high), so I shut the throttle and pointed the nose somewhere near Vne - as an aside, it was a diesel aircraft with liquid cooling, so took this kind of abuse in its stride.

Started at 10,000 descending at about 1,500 fpm, about 7,000 feet I felt a tiny nagging pain above my left eyebrow, but passed it off as a blood vessel getting irritable or some other cause of life's sometimes unknown temporary pain.

Approaching 6,000, it was clear that this was a sinus issue, so I leveled off immediately. Obviously there was still equalising trying to occur in my head, and the pain became so great that I instinctively covered my left eye with my hand for fear of it popping out or disintegrating! Whilst doing this, I initiated a climb at full power, stopping every couple of hundred feet, trying to meet the 'mid-point' where I'd be equalised and the pain would gradually reduce. I was attempting to cure what I decided to term 'cold induced pressure inertia syndrome'!

The descent from 6,500 or so was the longest (literally, and metaphorically) I'd ever experienced, and of course as I came below 3,000 and the density change increased exponentially, the descent was extremely slow.

Seriously, do not fly with a cold. Do not fly if you have recovered from a cold within the past week (as I had during this occasion). As Pace mentioned above, it probably wasn't the cold that caused the agony I experienced, but a side effect of the cold, such as some kind of infection that I was unaware of.

It took less than a minute between feeling the initial symptoms to nearly passing out through the pain, on my own, in a plane. Not clever.

edited to say - The bad planning was probably a result of a lack of concentration caused by the aforementioned malady, ironically

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Finally, as an ex-CFI of a gliding club, let me tell you that the pressure change over the first 1,000 feet in the earth's atmosphere if you have a cold is the worst.
This turns out not to be the case.

I wasn't sure whether I'd fully recovered from a cold, but I thought that if I survived one circuit with an instructor (I was due a club check ride) I'd be OK then going solo, on the "bottom 1,000' is the worst" theory.

This theory turned out to be utter bollocks. I had no trouble at all going up and down 1,000' with the instructor. But coming down from 7,000' on my own later was really not very nice at all.

Ever since then I've given it a full week after the last hint of a departing cold before going flying.

[peterh337]

Great input guys - especially as i am doing my ATPL Human Performance studying at the mo !

Very important to learn that highly (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/jaa-ir/bull4.gif) relevant (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/jaa-ir/hpbull1.gif) stuff (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/jaa-ir/hpbull2.gif)

:E

Never had to learn so much utter bull in my life.

[Pace]

I don't know but I think the rate of cabin pressure change in an airliner is lower than in say a -1000fpm unpressurised descent.

Its approx 2-300 fpm and does not vary with actual descent rate of the aircraft unless there is a problem.
So the normal Pax on a holiday flight could have a Cabin Pressure of say 5000 feet and That cabin would descend at say 300 fpm from a mid 30K cruise level.

Pace