Headaches

[jabarra1]

Hey you guys/girls at the pointy end, i have a question that hopefully somebody can answer!

I have an employee that suffers from severe sinus headaches on descent whenever he flys with Virgin - yet if he flew the same route with Qantas he suffers no ill effects.

Do the two companies use different descent profiles, could there be some other reason or is he just suffering from "I just wanta fly Qantas syndrome"?

Any information here would be great, cheers!

[Kranky]

A mate of mine swears that QF land their 73's smoother than DJ also.
Whatever....

[OneDotLow]

jabarra,

Up until about a month ago, the airlines were using different decent profile speeds. Due to the way the policy was worded, at QF most aircraft at domestic weights were descending at ~265kts. I speak for the 767, not the 737 as I am not endorsed.

This leads to a marginally longer decent phase, and therefore a marginally lower rate of decent. This may have given your mate a few more chances to swallow/equalise over the decent phase, but I dare say it was probably barely perceptible from the cabin.

Currently AirServices policy is for domestic aircraft to descend at ~280kts.

Cheers!

[an3_bolt]

Suggest he gets some "ventilation tubes" (grommets) installed. His life will be much much better for it.

[tasdevil.f27]

My ex wife used to be in tears on decent until she found those ear plugs things. She also swore that VB flights were worse.. I only ever experienced pain once on a Alaska Airlines on decent into YVR, that was painful, even the hosties were in pain, but geez we made up some time :}

[cribble]

I have a somewhat different problem: all phases of flight in a QANTAS jet give me the absolute sh!ts.:)

(head down, awaiting incoming)

[Bluebottle]

These decent descent profiles seem anything but......:E

Takes cover......

[VH-XXX]

Can someone who actually knows stuff post about this please?

Is it not the case that cabin pressure is set at around 8.500ft and this would start to be maintained as the aircraft ascends through 8,500ft? Once it descends through 8,500 (or whatever) does it reduce naturally?

[OneDotLow]

xxx,

The cabin pressure system is designed to maintain a pressure differential (generally about 9psi), rather than a cabin altitude. ie if the aircraft climbs to a cruising altitude of lets say FL200 then the cabin might only climb to 2500', but if the aircraft climbs to a cruising altitude of FL410 then the cabin altitude might be up around 8500'.

In addition, the human ear can only comfortably handle about 500'/minute rate of decent, so the system is programmed to descend at a rate approximating this. That is to say that when the aircraft starts descent the cabin pressure will also start descent so that both reach the landing altitude at the same time, but the cabin has significantly less rate of descent, giving a more comfortable pressure change for passengers.

Cheers!