I am the pilot of
Mooney N228RM. We were on my 10th transatlantic flight from Sarasota (KSRQ), Florida to Kiel (EDHK) Germany. During our stop-over in Reykjavik (BIRK), Iceland, we needed fuel and oxygen as we are flying 20.000 to 25.000ft.
The flight service in Reykjavik advised us where the oxygen bottles were and that we had to handle the oxygen supply ourselves.
As I had watched the oxygen supply in the past, I felt secure to handle the process myself without any problems. I hooked the lines together and got properly connected to the Mooney oxygen inlet.
Finally I got my pressure gauge up to 1500 PSI.
So we had got oxygen and fuel and could could continue our flight inbound Kiel, Germany, around 09.44Z on Friday the 17th of September 2010.
Shortly after our take off, from runway 13, we were cleared to climb FL210. Passing through FL100 we activated our oxygen supply, monitoring the oxygen flow control and I put on the nasals while my copilot Steve put on the mask. After a while I felt some dizziness , but regarded this as a result of our previous long flight on oxygen using nasals on higher altitudes and thought, I also better have to use the oxygens mask instead of the nasals, so I switched to the mask as well.
As Steve told me later, it must have been 20 minutes after that, when we were at FL 210, that I did not respond to 2 calls from ATC and he then realized that I must be unconscious, while he also felt sick and had no feeling in his left leg anymore. So Steve assumed something must be wrong with the oxygen supply and he switched off the auto pilot and descended to FL100 immediately. After a short while I got conscious again and Steve explained to me what had happened.
I got out my oximeter that I had with me to measure oxygen saturation in the blood and we saw low levels of below 70%. An oxygen level of below 90% causes strong hypoxemia and we had gotten far below that and we were lucky that Steve was still able to react while I was already unconscious.
What had happened?
Obviously the green bottle that I had been using for the oxygen supply in Reykjavik had not contained oxygen, instead it must have contained nitrogen! When I had gotten oxygen from flight service in Sarasota, the cylinders looked the same green as those in Reykjavik.
Searching the web, I found that this seems to be a general problem in Aviation, that oxygen bottles have different colors in different parts of the world and no big striking placard saying OXYGEN.
The other concern is: Never should flight service allow self-service of such a life-critical item be handled by someone not specially trained for that kind of service.
CONCLUSION: We were both lucky to be alive, since we would not have regained consciousness at FL210 if we both had become incapacitated. Aviation must have a professional secure level how oxygen should be handled!
Tracking of the flight ca be seen here:
POP3 GPS Tracking System
Pictures of one of my transatlantic flights can be seen here:
SRQ-EDHK Trip N