Sky Regional ERJ-175 - Both pilots sick

[EternalNY1]

This must have been interesting ...

The aircraft was descending towards Washington's Ronald Reagan Airport when below 10,000 feet the aircraft encountered severe turbulence all the way down. Both flight crew felt sick and had problems controlling the aircraft, at 1600 feet the crew initiated a go-around and received vectors for a second approach. The first officer became ill and was unable to continue duties.

Motion sickness?

http://avherald.com/h?article=484909ea&opt=0

[skyhighfallguy]

I have to say, this is a little odd.

But some advice. While an autopilot can be useful in turbulence, the surest way to calm a pilot from being sick is to have his hands on the controls. The best method of using an autopilot is PITCH HOLD if available. I have never been in this type and do not know its autopilot system.

Fasten your seatbelt/harness as tight as possible to keep your BUTT firmly in the seat. IF you raise up off your seat even slightly two things will happen, your butt will transmit a signal to your brain that NEGATIVE G is present and you will get sick, you will also move the controls to restore positive G and this will only make things worse.

Its been 40 years since I soloed and I have only encountered SEVERE turbulence twice. Both times were over mountains of the california/nevada area.

IT seems that the crew couldn't get low altitude because of security concerns over the District of Columbia.

But they should have gone to Dulles airport and that should have been pretty easy at low altitude.

Unless other planes were reporting SEVERE turbulence, I truly doubt that it was SEVERE. The area near DC is pretty heavily travelled and for someone else not to report it is a little odd.

[vapilot2004]

DCA is a challenging place to land at, even on a nice day, particularly when 19 is in use.

[Centaurus]

The best method of using an autopilot is PITCH HOLD if available.

Autopilot Pitch Hold in severe turbulence? Maybe it depends on the manufacturer's recommendation for a specific aircraft type. For the Boeing 737 Classic, the Supplementary Procedures chapter on Adverse weather Severe Turbulence, recommends autopilot CWS for pitch and roll. If sustained trimming occurs disengage the autopilot. Certainly not pitch hold as this can result in severe pitching movement as the autopilot tries to hold level flight in what could be a thunderstorm.

[bubbers44]

Pitch hold maintains pitch attitude. Altitude hold maintains level flight. CWS holds whatever your last physical setting of the yoke pitch and attitude were so is similar to pitch hold and easily changed with the yoke. Either pitch hold or control wheel steering would be a good choice for autopilot operation in severe turbulence.

[skyhighfallguy]

centaurus

the greater danger is trying to have an autopilot hold altitude , not attitude

some planes have pitch hold mode. control wheel steering, like bubbers says, will hold the last pitch you set. (I never liked CWS, but I started in Douglas which does it different)


) If using automatic pilot, disengage Altitude Hold Mode and Speed Hold Mode. The
automatic altitude and speed controls will increase maneuvers of the aircraft thus increasing
structural stress)



Do maintain constant attitude. Allow the altitude and airspeed to fluctuate


both above are from the US FAA AIM

[Loose rivets]

Was it the American navy that had a specific charge of, Nauseating the crew? I think it was based on going on a bender and being sick - this caused other crew to feel the same.

So, could it be that only one pilot had motion sickness, while the other was 'Nauseated' as a reaction?

It is just possible I suppose that they had somehow eaten the same contaminated food despite every precaution.


Old Elliot AP was height lock out and used the trim thumb-wheel - but beyond a certain level we'd hand fly it. I think it was an inherent mistrust of the system.

[langleybaston]

QUOTE:
Unless other planes were reporting SEVERE turbulence, I truly doubt that it was SEVERE. The area near DC is pretty heavily travelled and for someone else not to report it is a little odd.

This opinion flies against observed experience. UK Met Office experimental flights found severe CAT [we don't know if it was Clear Air, of course] was very difficult to locate even if the research aircraft went to the area where CAT was forecast and another aircraft had experienced it. Even severe turbulence associated with cloud and weather systems is notoriously localised and ephemeral.

One of our leading scientists compared CAT to a shoal of fish in a big ocean: well spaced, and darting around all the time. An individual fish represented a jolt.

[skyhighfallguy]

langley baston

perhaps you do not know how amazingly busy the KDCA airspace is. For one plane to have severe turbulence and no one else either means they really hit WAKE turbulence or others felt the turbulence was NOT severe.

Was the plane momentarily out of control? Were there injuries to flight attendants walking around? no mention of that.

I don't know what was wrong, but would like to know what they had to eat for lunch. Maybe the fish?

[EternalNY1]

So, could it be that only one pilot had motion sickness, while the other was 'Nauseated' as a reaction?

That was my immediate impression when I first saw this ... co-pilot got severely nauseous to the point of being incapacitated which could have possibly had impacts on the captain, leaving them both in a tough spot.

[vapilot2004]

Wind was gusting to 23kts, max recorded, 41kts! TS reported less than an hour from arrival - clearly the atmosphere was playing rough that day. If the guys up front were getting ill, I'm sure some people in the back were a bit green about the gills too.

It appears they would have been using 01, which is an over the water approach - much easier than the northern runway's gyrations with a SKILS 2 arrival coming from the north. That would have them in the bumpiest parts of the sky, under FL100, for about 20 minutes, before the GA.

I've been in many a toss about in a mere B200 going to National. Under 8000 feet or so, air currents from the cooler Potomac and surrounding bodies of water mixing with metro area land heat can make that area a roller coaster of air even on good days, and this was clearly not a good day.

[Lonewolf_50]

Was it the American navy that had a specific charge of, Nauseating the crew? I think it was based on going on a bender and being sick - this caused other crew to feel the same.
The Navy used to have a desensitization training program that helped pilots deal with airsickness. We used it quite a bit (we called it the spin and puke training :ok: ) for flight students in early training who were encountering more than occasional airsickness episodes. In some cases, the training helped people over come their penchant for air sickness, in some others the physiologists figured out that the person in question was not adaptable to the cockpit environment. (Two of the students in my flight were dropped/attrited for that very reason, late 80's). I am not sure if that is what you were asking about, but that evaluation/training method was still in place in the early 00's. Had heard some were trying to get rid of it ... I'll have to check and see what my sources know.
EDIT:
FWIW: that program was cancelled within the past decade, it apparently had a very low success rate.

[Chronus]

How reliable is the report about the level of turbulence.
My understanding of the levels of turbulence are:

Light Chop : Slightly uncomfortable-1.3 G tolerance.
Medium :Strap them in, would cause pax to be ejected from seat-1.6 G tolerance.
Severe : Pilot MK1 eyeball cannot cope with instruments-2.0G tolerance-+/- 25kt IAS excursions and 2500-2999fpm v/s. Particularly nasty in heavies, in thin atmosphere at high levels.

I would be inclined to suggest in this instance the finger points to some kind of stomach bug for the crew more likely than turbulance.

[Aerien]

it's amazing how misunderstood those terms are on 123.45...