Dreaming with a foot in the real world.
 

Ok, so, this pilots sleeps as he is permitted to, but have you never experienced dreaming about things that happens around you? Audition is the sense that used to wake us up over the presence of a predator. In emergency first aid, they tell us to yell loud a victim's name in order to try to bring back an unconscious patient. (along with other measures including inflicting pain) It is understood that audition is the last sense to switch off when you sleep and when you sink into a coma.

AC SOPs indeed says a pilot can't touch the controls 15 minutes after waking up from a sleep period. Could this pilot have heard the com chat in its integrality or just his co-worker answering control about the incoming plane? I can almost then get into his dream (like in the movie Inception) that he is at the controls and for reasons that only happens in nightmares, he can't get out of its way. The plane either doesn't answer his commands or the other plane matches his every moves. He wakes up, still somewhat dreaming (hence the rule) and instinctively, for self preservation, he takes controls to continue trying to avoid the non-incoming plane. Can we even call that some form of somnambulism here?

Anyway. To me, this incident illustrates more the indiscipline of passengers when you tell 'em to buckle up. As a SLF too, the thing I fear most when I fly, is getting a 90Kg person in my face.

Exactly so! The incident happened "mid-Atlantic", roughly eastbound, at about 0200 EST, which I'd approximate as - say - 0530 local. That's just before local sunrise, with Venus somewhat East of South, and heading "southwards". The planet, at that time, was also fairly low in the sky. So the FO was looking into the rising sun, with Venus fading both in terms of relative brightness, and sinking away slightly to his right.

Years ago I had a Spanish crew refuse takeoff clearance until the "one on final has landed" .

Bit of a wait as it was Venus.......in fairness it was pre tcas and the object was awfully bright!:ok:

Just can't figure out why people don't leave their seatbelt fastened while in their seats, even a loosely fastened one would keep you from banging off the ceiling as some of those pax claim.

Injured?
 

Any speculation as the the extent of the "injuries" on board?
With a VS of 400fpm up, then down, surely a few of the SLF'ers are just after a payout or wanting to sue AC for the said acquired injuries?

My 2c

It's not the amount of the excursion; it's more to do with the rate.
With the forces quoted below, this is more than enough to throw an unsecured object (or person) fairly gently at the ceiling, then violently at the floor.

I would have no idea how many, if any, would be exaggerating the severity of their injuries for a better payout.

what's the problem ? he didn't hit it..

Tarq57 - fair point regarding the rate 2.0g's.....

Im surprised no one has admitted avoiding uranus yet

Once going into KLAX after a long flight from Europe my copilot and I saw what appeared to be an aircraft converging with us rapidly. We could see the green nav light on one side and the red on the other, but they were reversed from the norm.

We were close to taking evasive action when we realized it was two aircraft diverging in the distance rather than one aircraft getting closer. We laughed about it and carried on, but to both of us it looked like a converging aircraft until we recognized it was not - then we couldn't see how we thought it was converging.

I doubt we would've had that problem if we weren't coming off of a 14 hour duty day.

My concern is that the pilot in charge did not obey the rules of the air. In that he chose to push the controls forward instead of instigating a right turn as laid down in the rules of the air. Unless airline pilots have different rules to us private pilots.

I also applaud the other poster, who stated to the effect, that the Pax who were injured were not strapped in as per the illuminated sign and no doubt the accompany announcement. Maybe a time to put a note, to remind people to strap in, and its effects, gibving examples in the duty free magazine, company in flight magazine and Sky Mall ! reminding them of there obligations.:=

Lets assume that the initial dive was gentle and you floated up to the ceiling a height of say 2.5m max above the floor. Your relative velocity is zero, then the plane hits 2g. How fast do you hit the floor, the arm of a chair etc..

v^2 = u^ + 2as

Assume:
u^2=0
a = 2g

V= SQRT(4gs)
so
V= SQRT (2 * 2 * 9.8 * 2.5)
V= 10 meters per second.

Thats 22mph into the relatively solid floor or the arm of a seat etc. That's going to cause injuries.

http://www.ite.org/technical/Interse...edestrians.pdf

"The fatality rate for a pedestrian hit by a car at 20 mph is 5 percent."

While this event was not in response to a TCAS TA or RA as commercial pilots we receive a considerable amount of training in collision avoidance. The focus is in the vertical. Primarily because TCAS doesn't , as yet, coordinate turning manuevers.

It is also worthy of note that the turning radius while in the cruise phase is measured in nautical miles.

Hopefully, that will give some explanation as to why we dont simply break right.

Island-Flyer,

I had the same thing happen to me in the hold @ LHR (Pre-TCAS days too) but involving two landing lights of separate aircraft.
We weren't fatigued, but we were indeed a whole lot more awake afterwards.
Although it was merely an optical illusion, it was a wholly convincing one, & very alarming at the time. :eek:

Here's a true tale. When I worked a abroad a biz jet with a British crew was flying at high level eastbound one evening above a layer of CS. A fairly scared voice announced that they had a UFO in sight! My supervisor, an ex-Canberra Nav, reached for the nautical almanac and checked the times for the moon... Yes, they'd seen just the top arc above the cirrus!!

PTR 175

As Flex33 said, while the rules of the air are the same, I think two things should be considered:

1) As with Flex's post, all TCAS avoidance manoeuvres are in the vertical plane, therefore it would not be difficult for it to become counter intuitive to bank in order to avoid traffic (although I would like to think that I would, irrelevant of the axis, always take the most appropriate avoidance action in a situation, you never know). Rules of the air are one thing but it IS hard to revert to type, especially if this poor (and embarassed) guy has spent at least the last 14 years climbing and descending in the sim to avoid traffic during TCAS training!

2) I think there is an element of sleep stupor here. Especially if you wake up, see Venus in front of you and are told that there's closing traffic. Not difficult to suffer from a bit of confirmation bias and see nothing but this enormously bright light straight ahead of you! It may become difficult, in this situation, to analyze the situation properly and apply any proper the rules of the air, or indeed training and revert to human survival technique number one - duck!

Chatting to my skipper last night he mentioned that a similar illusion had happened to one of our crews over the North Atlantic some years ago. I must say that I can imagine it's easier than people might think to do this.

There but for the grace of God fellas...

You are joking...right? Very funny, if you are.

Hope he doesn't wake up at cruise altitude to see a head-on aircraft climbing through his level :E

Are you Sirius? Obviously you don't fly for a living.

Time for a break :
Many moons ago when Crossair was still putting normal fuel loads in its Saabs2000, and the USAF were flying non stop to Ramstein with their C5s galaxies to prepare the first invasion of Iraq, I had one a Saab cruising at FL280 and an inbound C5 stopped at 290 waiting for lower, the tracks were exactly opposite , night time, little to do so I pass on naively traffic info on both. Apparently the C5 guy waited until the last moment to put all the landing lights on. All I heard was " :mad: " and saw the mode C of the Saab going down 300ft . The next comment from the Saab was : " This is like Star wars ! "
Not sure how the pax behind appreciated, never heard anything back .

End of the historical minute.