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To: pepsionice; Textide
According to the speculation in the article, several minutes passed from the time of the first alarm until the pilot passed out. I'm guessing "failure to pressurize" means that the cabin/cockpit, rather than suffering a sudden de-pressurization, gradually lost pressure as the plane rose in altitude, equalizing with the outside air pressure. That is, the plane interior never pressurized in the first place.

My point in raising the question about masks is this: a mask dropping from the ceiling would be a lot more difficult for a pilot to ignore than a warning light would be. And, if the link Textide provides is accurate and the masks *don't* drop automatically in the cockpit, then that might be a feature that Boeing would want to add in future versions of their planes.

10 posted on 09/07/2005 10:49:53 AM PDT by Bear_in_RoseBear ("Usually we try to go break things. Here we're trying to fix things." --Gen. Honore 09/07 press conf)
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To: Bear_in_RoseBear
then that might be a feature that Boeing would want to add in future versions of their planes.

As a pilot, but not an airline pilot, I blame the pilots and maybe the company/Cypriot FAA here. They should be intimately familiar with all of the aircraft's systems, especially if they're flying something as advanced as a B-737.

The first step when any alarm goes off is to identify the alarm. The next step is to determine whether the alarm is malfunctioning or whether it's telling the truth. Apparently, these pilots were unfamiliar with the alarm, or else they would've put on their masks immediately, then determined whether the alarm was indeed telling the truth.

In short, proper training of the airline crew would've likely prevented this accident (based on the article). To move some of the myriad of other switches which a pilot needs away from them in order to make room for an oxygen mask that is in a position where they should've known it to be, is misplaced concern IMO. It doesn't save anyone in that accident, sure, but you can bet that every air crew since has reviewed their depressurization procedures because of this accident, making future flights safer.

14 posted on 09/07/2005 11:31:03 AM PDT by Textide
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