Qatar Airways Pilot dies mid-flight
 

It's in the Aljazeera TV breaking news that a Qatar airways flight en-route from Manila to Doha Qatar had to make an emergency landing in Kuala Lumpur, due to inflight death of the pilot. They didn't specify the rank and whether he was operating then or not. I would think such a flight would be augmented crewed and there would have been no real situation where the flight was flown solo for any period at all.
Anybody with the latest could you please update us here on the forum?

Very sad if true and my best wishes and condolences to all concerned, I have friends working for them and I'm trying to find this story for more details but it is not being reporting anywhere that I can see at the moment.

Good ammunition to keep at LEAST two pilots in a cockpit on any airline.

It's a fact of life that thousands of people die prematurely every day. Even pilots.

A question for QR pilots;

Manila to Doha must be about 9 hours. Would this flight have an augmented crew, or just the standard two-pilot crew?

Dave

Would an augmented crew have made much difference ?.

Trying to remove a dead captain from the LH seat would be fraught with accidental control hazards, it would be safer to leave well alone and fly
a diversion from the RH seat. Just make sure that the seat belt is secure and that hands & feet are safely out ouf the way.

That would depend on whether the pilot who died was in the seat at the time.

Dave

What about taking him out of his seat and administer CPR to try to save his life instead? :ugh:

I hope you are not my FO the day my main hydraulic pump fails in flight.

Ok, sorry in advance for bringing this up and I plead guilty to bad taste, but I would really enjoy to read Mr. O'Leary's comments on this incident...
or perhaps Ryanair pilots are forbidden by contract to die while on duty? :ugh:

Don't want to come to wrong conclusion but that poor co-pilot is still under a train!

I would like to see your face when your left/right seat collapse and you aren't capable of doing nothing (also if you are the best CPRest in the world)!

Performing a pilot incapacitation landing can be a piece of cake (especially because trained in the sim), compare to timely handle such a psychological strong event like seen someone dying close to you!

i agree with Yo767. All of the cabin crew that I have met have been trained to safely remove a pilot from the seat and administer CPR. I cannot believe that Mr Geek would really leave a guy having a heart attack to die rather than getting assistance from the cabin crew.

Dave

PS......Are there any QR guys here? How many pilots are on this flight?

3 crew on the way back....

... I really doubt they left the poor guy in the seat!

It depends.

There are degrees of severity in heart attacks. A mild attack can be as simple as a sudden chest pain. My only personal experience was with a neighbour, we were standing next to his garage chatting about car problems when he grabbed at his chest and said "I've never had a pain like that before". Within a few seconds he collapsed to the ground. Not breathing, no iris response, nothing. He was stone dead and nothing we did would have helped. We tried but it was futile.

So yes, it MIGHT be possible to help the captain out of his seat and administer CPR if his condition was recoverable but dead is dead.
I am sure that the crew would have done their best to save him if there was any hope.

Unbelievable

Even with a conventional yoke, two cabin crew should be able to remove a pilot from his seat without causing too much grief. With an Airbus it will be nice and easy.

Condolences to all involved - friends, family and the crew of the aeroplane who had to deal with a traumatic experience and still operate safely.

As an ex First Responder with a little experience, leaving him in his seat is not an option. There is ALWAYS a possibility that efficient CPR may have the right effect, and all large passenger aircraft have an automatic defibrillator on board.?? To leave him in his seat would be unforgiveable. No pulse or breathing does not necessarily mean dead, though if you leave him there, he soon would be!!.

Wood/Trees
 

The key issue here is not how to remove the incapacitated pilot from the controls, it is why such events should take place. Admittedly a fatal incapacitation can always happen, albeit rarely.

With the prevailing exhaustion levels amongst EY/EK/QR long-haul crew, I wonder what consideration the airline management give to the increased risks of in-flight problems. The East-West rostering is at times inhumane, according to my contacts in all 3 companies. I also wonder how much the airlines are concerned about staff health....

And why all the widespread condolences and commiserations to all and sundry? What if the guy was an unpleasant s.o.b? It has been written many times before, but there is no need for half the contributors to send condolences to people they do not have the slightest connection with. Perhaps pprune should have a Condolences section for those that feel the need to express themselves.

Even if he was the nastiest pilot in the world, it's still a traumatic event for the rest of the crew to deal with.

As a cabin crew who has dealt with this issue (happily, our pilot survived) the first thing the F/O did was establish control of the aircraft. He then called us to come and get the captain out of the seat to administer first aid.

His instruction to us was first to avoid hitting the controls and then secondly attend to the poor guy. (one outfit I used to fly for got us to actually practise this on ground with one of the flight deck crew as part of initial training. It was bloody hard to a) get a good enough grip on the guy and b) get enough lifting force to bring him out, clear of hitting anything. Airbus is definitely easier to deal with in this respect)

I'm sure you're all familiar with aviate, navigate. communicate. As soon as the first two were taken care of, we came into it.

I can only imagine how the poor crew felt and while single pilot approach/landing is a high stress/workload, imagine how it is when you've just witnessed your colleage dying/dead!!! Have a little sympathy!!

It was bad enough for us and ours lived to fly another day.

If fatigue is an issue, then it should be looked at.

Just wanted to add in from the CC point of view.