...spatial disorientation was responsible for between 6% and 32% of major aviation accidents...

Well, that narrows it down.

You know who else was on the wing..

Surely they can't be serious.

Consider this also:

Your pilot doesn't want to make your phone calls for you, there's a laminated card back there somewhere....USE IT.
Your pilot didn't prepare the catering, he didn't order it, he has no idea who did or where it came from, so complaining to him about it is useless.
We'll get there when we get there, if thats not good enough you'll find a flat panel screen on the forward bulkhead that tells you where we are and how much further in miles and minutes, don't be afraid to look at it.
Your pilot will gladly get out of bed at 3AM to take you home for a family emergency, if you "may have" gotten into a little trouble at the bar downstairs, you "may have" to deal with it.
Your pilot can't create good weather, but he can fly around bad weather.
Your pilot doesn't care if you don't want to go to Buffalo, you shouldn't have came to the airport if thats the case, but the same guy that signs my checks also signs yours, and if you don't make it there, he fades the heat, so STFU about it.
Your pilot doesn't care if you spilled wine on your skirt made of imported silk, but you kept it off the carpet and for that he thanks you.

That should about do it. For now.

strangeguitar: You know who else was on the wing..

As a matter of fact, yes...

Looks like cazman is fed up and right on the verge of tossing a problem customer out of the emergengy exit at 40 thousand feet just to watch them bounce.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: strangeguitar: You know who else was on the wing..

As a matter of fact, yes...

That, my friend, is awesome.

strangeguitar: That, my friend, is awesome.

SilentStrider: ow ow ow ow ow ow

coca cola through the nose does NOT feel good!


Heh, thanks, folks!

And at no extra charge...

Note to subby:

There's a reason why flight instructors teach their students to trust the plane's instruments over their own senses.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: As a matter of fact, yes...

Thread is over, everyone go home.

/awesome

musashi1600: Note to subby:

There's a reason why flight instructors teach their students to trust the plane's instruments over their own senses.

There was a thing on TV about a problem with landing gear on c commercial flight. One of the passengers said "the pilots saved our lives." Think about this. Don't the pilots save everyone's lives on every flight?

Inflatable Rhetoric: musashi1600: Note to subby:

There's a reason why flight instructors teach their students to trust the plane's instruments over their own senses.

There was a thing on TV about a problem with landing gear on c commercial flight. One of the passengers said "the pilots saved our lives." Think about this. Don't the pilots save everyone's lives on every flight?

Everyone on the plane, I meant.

Inflatable Rhetoric: Inflatable Rhetoric: musashi1600: Note to subby:

There's a reason why flight instructors teach their students to trust the plane's instruments over their own senses.

There was a thing on TV about a problem with landing gear on c commercial flight. One of the passengers said "the pilots saved our lives." Think about this. Don't the pilots save everyone's lives on every flight?

Everyone on the plane, I meant.

Yea, I did fly for a living for awhile.

tasteme: Looks like it's gonna be a bad day for that kid!

goletaal: Surely they can't be serious.

They are. And don't call me Shirley.

I am a pilot so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

Actually my first time in "actual" (flying into the clouds) was VERY VERY disorienting. up and down no longer really mean much because your body and your eyes' information don't match, so the brain comes up with all kinds of interesting interpretations of where you are moving or pointing...

You learn to trust the instruments, and also when NOT to trust them, very quickly, but the illusions the brain can play really are rather interesting.

It's interesting how much the brain relies on visual information for position awareness. If you remove visual cues to orientation, its easy to "feel funny". I used to work in a studio with a very large, white L-shaped cyclorama, 20 feet tall and 48 feet on both directions and an identical white floor. It was pretty much textureless. There was a point where if you were close to the corner and looked that way for too long you'd get a weird disorienting feel because your entire visual field was pure white.

I can see how that can happen while piloting a plane and the entire window is a featureless, even color. Your only reference is vibrations around you, and your brain starts to have some compounding error after awhile...

Great, we have this again.

We covered this last thread. It happens. They're trained to compensate for this with instrumentation. There are two pilots. This isn't a real problem and there's nothing that can be done to completely prevent this.

"As you prepare to drive off somewhere for Christmas, consider this: most of the morons in the oncoming lane traveling at 70 miles per hour aren't qualified to jerk off much less drive a car"

'Spatial disorientation happens when a pilot loses a sense of up and down, or is unable to correctly interpret aircraft attitude, altitude or airspeed.'

I had no idea you could 'interpret' your altitude and airspeed based on your inner ear. I always figured that's what all those dials and displays were for.

/The more you know...

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3242590

Everyone's already forgotten?

I took flying lesson many years ago. As part of the training, you have to fly "under the hood" which means you wear a big visor and you cannot see out the windows and you have to fly by instruments.

It was crazy. You'd be surprised how quickly you can lose control of an airplane. Your brain says you're flying straight and level, but the instruments tell you that you're descending in a steep turn. I can easily see how pilots fly straight into the ground at night in cloudy conditions.

This is much more of a problem for small aircraft (cessna 172's, etc) than larger commercial flights.

scotbot: goletaal: Surely they can't be serious.

They are. And don't call me Shirley.

Ding ding ding!

MIRV888: 'Spatial disorientation happens when a pilot loses a sense of up and down, or is unable to correctly interpret aircraft attitude, altitude or airspeed.'

I had no idea you could 'interpret' your altitude and airspeed based on your inner ear. I always figured that's what all those dials and displays were for.

/The more you know...

I've experienced spatial disorientation before, it was part of a checkride once. The CA that was with me (at night) threw 2 pens and a chart or checklist maybe, I can't remember, on the floor and said "I've got the plane, you pick that stuff up."

Wow. I will never, ever, lean forward to pick something off the floor again. When your head pops back up your world is not just upside down, it's spinning and yawing like you wouldn't believe. It's scary as hell, the helpless feeling is something you never forget.

I've experienced a similar phenomenon after being on a sailing ship for a week. For about 24 hours after getting back on land any time I went into a shower, bathroom stall or other small space everything would start pitching around so hard that I'd nearly fall over. Freaky as hell. You don't have a horizon when you're below decks or in a small room so your inner ear takes over... and then refuses to let go.

This is why we teach unusual attitudes under the hood. Fun for me, and a good way to teach you that the leans are a bastard. After some various techniques to get their vestibular sense all screwed up, I'll have them take the controls, and with their eyes closed try to put it in what they think is a 30 degree bank left turn, then level, right, level, then left again. Even when a student knows ahead of time what I'm doing to them they can't help it and always seem to find themselves in a 60-80 degree bank diving left turn...

/half the reason to be an instructor is the joy of screwing with people I think
//grass airports are fun for simulated engine outs too
//go around? no. go around? nah. um...go around??? nah, you can flare now though.

Corporate Mofo: This is why God invented instrument ratings.

Trust me, that instrument rating won't help you, the auto-pilot should though.

When the first artificial horizons were invented by Sperry they got letters complaining that the instrument worked fine in good weather but was completely unreliable in bad (cloudy) weather.

This is an outrage! Pilots should be given proper equipment that tells them what the plane is doing! And there should be a back-up pilot just in case!

Jack Torrence: I took flying lesson many years ago. As part of the training, you have to fly "under the hood" which means you wear a big visor and you cannot see out the windows and you have to fly by instruments.

It was crazy. You'd be surprised how quickly you can lose control of an airplane. Your brain says you're flying straight and level, but the instruments tell you that you're descending in a steep turn. I can easily see how pilots fly straight into the ground at night in cloudy conditions.

Zombies ate my neighbors: This is much more of a problem for small aircraft (cessna 172's, etc) than larger commercial flights.

That makes no sense.

Zombies ate my neighbors: This is much more of a problem for small aircraft (cessna 172's, etc) than larger commercial flights.

WTF?

cazman

We'll get there when we get there, if thats not good enough you'll find a flat panel screen on the forward bulkhead that tells you where we are and how much further in miles and minutes, don't be afraid to look at it.

Those are cool. But despite a couple of years as a frequent business traveller, I have only ever seen a plane with a screen like that twice-- on the way to and from Hawaii on vacation.

Not that I'd ever pester the pilot about the time it takes, I'm just saying most flights don't have anything like that.

As a non-pilot, I don't understand exactly. Spacial disorientation is a physiological response which is so strong that the pilot doesn't trust his instruments?

/I'm asking
//No snarkyness

I've seen some dumb, ignorant articles about aviation, but this one takes the cake. Its facts are wrong, totally non-specific, and is clearly written by someone whose information is all about fourth-hand. This is the sort of crap that gives people who don't know any better bad feelings about flying.

In 1999 spatial disorientation (SD) was blamed for the plane crash in which John F. Kennedy jnr and his wife died in a night flight over water near Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.

It was also because he flew into bad weather. SD may have been the final blow, but the reason was bad planning.

Ray Cronin, one of Australia's most experienced pilots and instructors, is only too aware of the risks. He estimates he has experienced SD half a dozen times over more than three decades in the industry. He says that when visual references disappear, such as occurs in cloud or at night, inexperienced pilots have only 20 seconds before losing control.

What the foxtrot-uniform-charlie-kilo? This is utterly idiotic. First of all, if a VISUAL rules pilot gets into a cloud, then something went catastrophically wrong with their flight planning, and they were stupid enough to fly into a cloud (which they're not allowed to do). Secondly, airplanes have instruments that allow you to keep the airplane under control when you lose visual references. If you're a VISUAL pilot, the first thing you will do in that circumstance is to call air traffic control and get yourself back out, using the instruments to fly the plane.

MIRV888: As a non-pilot, I don't understand exactly. Spacial disorientation is a physiological response which is so strong that the pilot doesn't trust his instruments?

/I'm asking
//No snarkyness

That's exactly right. It requires training and experience. Remember JFK Jr?

gevmage: I've seen some dumb, ignorant articles about aviation, but this one takes the cake. Its facts are wrong, totally non-specific, and is clearly written by someone whose information is all about fourth-hand. This is the sort of crap that gives people who don't know any better bad feelings about flying.

In 1999 spatial disorientation (SD) was blamed for the plane crash in which John F. Kennedy jnr and his wife died in a night flight over water near Martha's Vineyard, in Massachusetts.

It was also because he flew into bad weather. SD may have been the final blow, but the reason was bad planning.

Ray Cronin, one of Australia's most experienced pilots and instructors, is only too aware of the risks. He estimates he has experienced SD half a dozen times over more than three decades in the industry. He says that when visual references disappear, such as occurs in cloud or at night, inexperienced pilots have only 20 seconds before losing control.

What the foxtrot-uniform-charlie-kilo? This is utterly idiotic. First of all, if a VISUAL rules pilot gets into a cloud, then something went catastrophically wrong with their flight planning, and they were stupid enough to fly into a cloud (which they're not allowed to do). Secondly, airplanes have instruments that allow you to keep the airplane under control when you lose visual references. If you're a VISUAL pilot, the first thing you will do in that circumstance is to call air traffic control and get yourself back out, using the instruments to fly the plane.

Well, that's close.

raygundan: cazman

We'll get there when we get there, if thats not good enough you'll find a flat panel screen on the forward bulkhead that tells you where we are and how much further in miles and minutes, don't be afraid to look at it.

Those are cool. But despite a couple of years as a frequent business traveller, I have only ever seen a plane with a screen like that twice-- on the way to and from Hawaii on vacation.

Not that I'd ever pester the pilot about the time it takes, I'm just saying most flights don't have anything like that.

Most bizjets do, it's called Airshow.

Inflatable Rhetoric: There was a thing on TV about a problem with landing gear on c commercial flight. One of the passengers said "the pilots saved our lives." Think about this. Don't the pilots save everyone's lives on every flight?

Assuming that the plane doesn't slam into a mountain, yes.

raygundan: cazman

We'll get there when we get there, if thats not good enough you'll find a flat panel screen on the forward bulkhead that tells you where we are and how much further in miles and minutes, don't be afraid to look at it.

Those are cool. But despite a couple of years as a frequent business traveller, I have only ever seen a plane with a screen like that twice-- on the way to and from Hawaii on vacation.

Not that I'd ever pester the pilot about the time it takes, I'm just saying most flights don't have anything like that.

They're common on international flights.

ScubaDude1960: Inflatable Rhetoric: There was a thing on TV about a problem with landing gear on c commercial flight. One of the passengers said "the pilots saved our lives." Think about this. Don't the pilots save everyone's lives on every flight?

Assuming that the plane doesn't slam into a mountain, yes.

Someone should get rid of mountains, level things off.

agrees

\obscure?

cazman:

Your pilot will gladly get out of bed at 3AM to take you home for a family emergency, if you "may have" gotten into a little trouble at the bar downstairs, you "may have" to deal with it.

Your pilot doesn't care if you don't want to go to Buffalo, you shouldn't have came to the airport if thats the case, but the same guy that signs my checks also signs yours, and if you don't make it there, he fades the heat, so STFU about it.

I understood all the others on your list but I'm lost on these. Can you dumb it down for me? Or not. Either way, I'm keeping my fool mouth shut on your plane.