This is a subject close to my heart. But first, just a jogged memory.

I was pre-flighting a medium weight turboprop prior to a passenger flight. My usual test for O2 first flight of the day, was to turn the oxygen off, then keep breathing until I was sure the valve had actually closed.

One day I just kept breathing. I put my finger in the outlet duct while looking in the mask. I could see my finger! The fleet's masks had been cleaned and some NRVs had never been replaced. They'd been flying like that for some days.

You can imagine the potential danger.


The jogged memory was about a Navajo I used to fly occasionally while training crews on a turboprop for most of the time. It was a nice little break, lovely countryside, and an undemanding schedule. But, I often just didn't feel right as I approached say, 8,000 feet.

It was hard to tell what was wrong, but something was. A feeling that the aircraft was balanced on a needle point. Move, and it would fall. I loved aerobatics, and if no pax, would throw it around as hard as I dared. Nothing. All normal. It was just when trying to maintain a smooth flight with a steady power setting.

Long story short, I had a huge medical, and nothing was found. Rather worrying. Then another pilot reported the same thing. The Air Force did his tests. EEGs, the lot. Nothing found. The aircraft was fitted with CO detectors. Nothing.

I reported that the sensation Always went away almost as soon as I dropped the nose for the decent. ( Change in engine note perhaps. )

One doc made the remark that up to now, he'd never had sound vibrations affecting crews, but 'it was going to happen one day.' Maybe. I tried different engine settings but it didn't help. Not enough change perhaps.

The thing is, just imagine if the two of us had been in that aircraft at the same time. Major red herring.

That was in 1979, and never happened again in thousands of hours of flying, though one significant factor has just come to mind. Somewhere in the same year, I was treated with Tetracycline for an ear infection. Can't have been too near the time, or it would have been obvious, but I've had tinnitus ever since, so just maybe a connection. Just a hint of the wrong signals going in from the balance circuits, but not enough to give the game away perhaps.

By the way, there is a school of thought that links that antibiotic with tinnitus. Be careful - Tinnitus sucks.:(

Barrett, as an aside, the medical profession may not refer to such things as a rebreather bag (or in fact the item I was referring to is incorrectly named in our paperwork) but I can tell you that three airlines I know of refer to them as such.

Not that we're saying it's correct, it's just the term most cabin crew would know them by. Ambu Bag is probably a brand name for the same thing mentioned before. It's what I know it as, I don't doubt medical personnel would call it something else.

http://i1006.photobucket.com/albums/...rebreather.jpghttp://i1006.photobucket.com/albums/...ich/th_BVM.jpg
Photo sizes have got a bit strange,but the large photo is a rebreather or reservoir bag - the patient needs O2 but can breathe unaided.The small photo is Bag Valve Mask(Ambu bag) - the patient can't breathe unaided, so the semi-rigid bag is squeezed to inflate the lungs with O2.

Pics
 

Yep, them's the ones!

Though it seems the mask with rebreather/resevoir bags are disappearing from aircraft as I now see more without the bag than with. Perhaps because of the reasons mentioned above that they confuse crew as to what they actually do? Would be interested to know why they seem to be getting changed out.

Is it possible that the confusion is because the term reservoir/rebreather is being used interchangeably?

The technical discussions about mask variants are very interesting but I think that they are obscuring a key concern: that of the "panic" expressed from the flight deck.

No doubt the call across the PA was in line with procedures and there was no panic from the pilots, but it does seem to have been perceived as such by some if not all of the passengers. I could certainly believe that there would have been an abruptness or a seriousness of tone which would not be present in Capt Speaking's regular "cruising at 35,000' " announcement which would have been picked up by passengers and caused the more nervous to become genuinely concerned about.

Now obviously if you have just put the aircraft into a rapid descent due to pressurisation concerns the pax will notice and you can afford a tone of urgency but with no other indications it could be possible to adjust tone or wording to make the important message appear routine.

Passenger worry clearly isn't the overriding factor in this situation (that would be having the crew breathe and function normally) but I would far sooner read headlines like "Passengers unaware while pilots flew on oxygen" than some of the guff which we have seen with this incident.

Problem is disguise it as something else to appease some nervous passengers and it may not have the desired effect of getting all the crew members attention and getting them all where they are needed, or might need to be.

As for the tone, well in this case it would seem the pilots thought they had a genuine and fairly urgent problem and I suspect even with all the PA training in the world their tone was going to appear less than routine.....

IMHO when the chips are down you just have to expend with the huggy fluffy stuff, get the job done, and sort the PR/nervous passenger/litigious passenger aspect of it later. FWIW I doubt the incident has been accurately reported here or in the general press so the stories about the PA are irrelevant - most of the "guff" would have been posted anyway.

Wiggy, initial post/report on here by myself was bang on accurate, I was there !!!! What ever the press write is up to them.

I still think what you thought was a panicked call from the flight deck was a normal call heard with the pilot trying to talk with a full O2 mask, as illustrated earlier, being wrapped round his face. This distorts voice and is not uncommon when a depressurisation has occurred and the crew are trying to contact ATC and having difficulty in being understood.

From a purely physical aspect, making yourself heard when wearing a full face mask, not to mention the breathing rate experienced during a 'pucker moment' would of course sound less than 'routine' to a passenger.

When practicing depressurisation PAs in the sim wearing a mask at a previous company, I was very surprised to see a video of myself later on... sounded nervous as hell, even though being i nthe sim I wasn't. The extra effort required probably made it sound so, I would assume the same in this situation. Wouldn't blame them for sounding a bit jittery though- adrenaline does that to people :ugh:

Other than checking the aircraft over, what action is taken to determine the cause?

Blood samples from the crew? 20 questions about what they ate? Is there a established plan of investigation in these circumstances?

batboy

I don't doubt that you were there.

Having donned the full face mask (in the simulator) on many occasions and tried to make a suitable soothing PA, I suspect, as do others, that what you describe as:

was in fact, as lakerman said:

If the press and other's want to attribute that unusual sounding PA as panicked, then IMHO I think "guff" still applies.

Pilots very occasionally have to function under great stress. If a pilot is the sort of person to panic then they would not have ever passed through the many hoops of training nor be able to cope with the job in general.

I have been under great stress, I have seen others under great stress what I have never heard is a pilot sounding panicky.

batboy1970, your original post failed to get the phrase used correct, you misinterpreted the fact that a CC member carried an oxygen bottle and you set so many hares running that the story has even made it into the German newspapers.

On behalf of all the pilots in the world thank you for the disservice.

Without wanting to sound too blasé, such events are more common than perhaps some may think. 757s and 146s have both had a notorious history and when both types were more widely used in the UK, one never needed flick too far through the latest MORs to find similar events, having been recently reported. Although the issue does seem to have improved a lot over the years.

Full face masks, PAN calls, paramedics, cabin crew having O2 ready etc are the routine drills for such events. What would have been more worthy of note is if the crew had not carried out the above drills with such a problem.

I myself have suffered from contaminated air on very short final once. The symptoms were a combination of a mild headache mixed with a rather 'tipsy' feeling, similar to what one could expect at closing time, after one too many!

Why is this thread surviving on R&N? Far more relevant threads that fit the forum description have been binned or demoted in the past. Because the mods have allowed it to develop to five pages of albeit well intentioned passenger questioning and mildly interesting but totally irrelevant breathing apparatus discussion it has attracted the attention of the Idiot Press and they have quoted excitable guesswork/nonsense that has turned a routine turn-back into something it wasn't, complete with "panic on the flighdeck".

So mods, why is it still here?

It was so "bang on accurate," including your description of how the flight crew was making all possible speed back to LHR in their hysteria, that somebody who was actually a pilot had to point out that outbound, they were flying into a strong headwind and when they reversed course, guess what happened? (I'll leave you to puzzle that out.)

Much of "what the press wrote up" is, of course, the obvious result of having read your "bang on accurate" assessment, as an Expert Passenger, of what transpired. Or didn't.

Another example to us of the accuracy of "witness" statements. Ever a challenge in the accident investigation field.

The observation are of what the witness experienced or thought they saw, interpreted in their narrow field of experienced to be later intrepreted by those experts with specialized knowledge and experience.

It's up to us, the reader to interpret through those few experts that do have the benefit of specialized knowledge and experience appropriate to the subject.

Sometime we depend on the media to search out and find the more appropriate interpretation, while all too often we subcomb to being lazy and allowing the media to just print the words that sell to their readership.

If the media is so dumb that they can't bother themselves to search for the realities than to simply quote an unvetted PPrune source than we have only to blame the news writer and not the witness.

Sorry, that was a poor choice of words.

I meant "simple" as in a textbook event which all flight crew train for regularly. Nothing "out of the ordinary" so to speak.

Mods

Could I throw my weight behind BitMoreRightRudder

The direction this thread has taken - whilst fascinating - is far removed from what actually happened. If we wait for the AAIB report we could then start a whole new thread based on a detailed description by a trusted agency.

I vote to to lock this thread.........

under those standards

why lock only this thread :confused:

OK - split off the entirely spurious posts about decompression and oxygen masks and repost them in the medical section.

Then lock the original thread awaiting some actual facts to emerge from the investigation.

We can then have a completely different set of discussions that don't include the word "rebreather".........

Hmm. The key phrase in the forum title is 'Rumour'. It is not necessary to deal only with established facts in a thread such as this. Not saying that there's anything to this story, just echoing lomapaseos point.

a bit more expansion on my part

I do come here to catch the latest published rumours as well as the vetting afterwards, preferring not to wait for the final report to play catch-up.

However, on the other side, I don't much care to be bombarded with local PPrune theories all the way to conclusions to the point where the unvetted stuff on here creates its own rumour in the news.

just my .02$, I don't have an opinion on how to run this forum

another rumour/reason....
 

Iompaseo,

Here's another rumour/reason for feeling 'dizzy' - Your old favourite, this time from Air Canada Pilots Association:

http://www.aerotoxic.org/download/do...er11.01.12.pdf

To be honest, from that sort of position it would probably take 20 minutes to land at any of the airports that you mention, due to the time required to prepare for the approach and physically fly it. Going back to LHR may not have been quicker but as they had just departed from there (and were therefore familiar with the conditions etc) as well as obviously being familiar with LHR approaches/Missed Approach Procedures, then as a "known" quantity it's a safer bet overall.

That is why the FARs say land at the nearest suitable airport. That means one you are familiar with. I am sure ICAO rules are the same.

We had smoke fumes through out our 757 over the Florida Keys one day going to Central America. Our closest airport was Navy Key West military base. Landing there made no sense and we did not consider it because descending required distance so we returned to MIA. A few minutes extra to land at a familiar airport is a lot safer than dumping into an unfamiliar airport. The other problem is if you land at the Military base everybody needs to bus back to Miami to start over. We changed gates and were gone again in one hour.

David Learmount's comment
 

David Learmount of Flight International has commented on this flight.

What Daily Mail passengers worry about on a BA flight - Learmount

Don't shoot the messenger and apologies if it's been repeated.

German BFU finds engine oil toxins in pilot's blood
 

The BFU (German equivalent of the AAIB) is not letting this one drop. Air Berlin has had two reportable fume incidents in a couple of months, one in an A330 and the other in a 737-700.

On the 737 the copilot was disabled by nausea. All the links are here: Pilot inflight collapse: Germany investigates cabin air poisons - Learmount

6 pages? Not only that, but a significant number of responses have zeroed in on cabin oxygen masks.

The apparent low level of pilot interest in cabin and cockpit fumes is hard to understand. No excuses.

For those occasions when the 'right-stuff' fully resplendent with 20:20 hindsight is lacking, there will always be a heavy dose of arrogance under both epaulets to lean upon!

A tad of grace would not be totally remiss.

I have never seen a pilot stressed in an airliner other than normal problems with ATC when you need them but they don't respond because they are occupied with something and you need something now. You are only stressed because you have to deviate from your clearance and no one will talk to you.

My retirement flight I was stressed because we were not cleared for the approach on a short runway and I was way above the glideslope before they finally did and high dived it to one of my worst landings with all my friends on board. The frequency was jammed and they forgot us. I wish I had just gone around until I could have had a normal approach. We had a great steak and lobster dinner for all that night however.

Do I get the impression that the sceptics have been silenced by what the BFU has revealed (see post 109 on this thread)? It's all gone very quiet.

Learmount BLOG
 

More fume casualties - Learmount

Am I the only one to feel relieved that this is going on in Germany - where they like engineering solutions?

Especially when there is near 100% certainty of the cause of the problem, when only 51% is required.

The precautionary principle states 'Face up to the issue' - as health is being knowingly wrecked..

My impression is that "the sceptics" were not skeptical--I'll revert to my American spelling--about the cause of this event, whatever it was or wasn't, they were skeptical about the OP's SLF description of the event as verging on panic and fear. I remain skeptical about that.

Understandable that confusion when different incidents are merged into one specific incident titled thread. :ugh:

Indeed, to sort this out one has to await the reports from the two different investigating agencies to even draw comparisons.

IMO these incidents need sorting out and assessed for corrective actions.

Toxic air in the Cockpit..
 

Following the copilot's collapse with nausea from oil fumes in the cockpit air on an Air Berlin flight from Milan Malpensa to Dusseldorf in November, German accident investigator BFU has taken the unprecedented step of sending a blood sample from the copilot for analysis to a specialist scientific organisation.


From previous experience the BFU knew what it might find in the copilot's blood: tri-ortho-cresyl phosphate (TOCP), a chemical constituent of the anti-wear additives in aircraft engine oil. This neurotoxic organophosphate has, on numerous documented occasions worldwide, got into the engine bleed air fed to the cockpit and cabin for air conditioning and pressurisation.


So the BFU arranged for the blood sample - taken from the copilot at a Dusseldorf hospital immediately after the flight - to be sent to the University of Nebraska for analysis. The tests proved positive, the BFU has reported. There was indeed TOCP in the copilot's blood, and what is more it had bonded with one of the natural enzymes in the copilot's body that regulates muscular and cognitive neural activity.


This is what TOCP does. The neurotoxicity of organophosphates is a known and understood phenomenon.


The BFU has said it is not going to put this subject down*. It is going to investigate the medical consequences of TOCP poisoning for pilots. Actually this is well known, but the BFU wants its own proof.


This is just what the airlines and aircraft manufacturers have been dreading: a government agency that is not prepared to look the other way any longer, like all the others have done so far.


The UK Civil Aviation Authority, for example, has had to face several cases of the inflight incapacitation of airline pilots.


Its reaction? Heath and Safety issues in an aircraft cabin are not its job [actually that's a wilful misinterpretation of its duties], and besides which, it was the pilots' fault for not getting their oxygen masks on fast enough.


How refreshing to see an agency like the BFU with the courage to face up to an issue as controversial as this.


It may lead to the industry finally having to do something about a problem which has been well known and understood for fifty years, and which has robbed thousands of flightcrew and cabin crew of their health and livelihoods.


Watch now as those with interests at stake try to silence the BFU.


Watch the conspiracy theories about the blood samples being rolled out.


Watch for the denigration of the copilot as a total wimp because the captain was not affected to the same degree.


Even Boeing, which has eliminated the risk of organophosphate contamination from its 787 series by generating cabin air supplies from sources independent of the engines and auxiliary power units, cannot celebrate, because all its other types are conventional.


The Air Berlin flight in this case was a Boeing 737-700 operated for the airline by Germania, but in October last year an Air Berlin Airbus A330 had just such an event, and the BFU is looking into that, too.


No pressurised types that draw bleed air from the engines or APU are immune. That means all of them except the 787.

CP many thanks, i stopped even commenting when it all got a bit silly. I have actually been contacted by the airline who have informed me of their initial findings. I wont go public on here but when it is announced it will cause something of a stir i have no doubt. The main thing i got from my corresponce was firstly i was bang on the money, secondly there were no mechanical or technical faults.......not with the plane anyway !!!!!!

Anyway AAIB im sure will clear this up im sure.

course profile
 

Small point, nothing to do with the original thread. Please note, you don't speak on my behalf :=

You start by posting your version of what happened setting all manner of hares running.

Now the airline have given you the full story so far but you aren't going to post it.

I am impressed you were 'bang on the money'. So your first post was accurate?

Fascinating.

Yes it was thanks