Posted on 02/20/2008 7:26:35 PM PST by Straight Vermonter
Nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong....
>>15 miles in a jet is the blink of an eye...<<
Well, actually it’s a bit less than 3 minutes. Also, you don’t wait ‘till you’re over the airport to start down. They were probably at 20,000 or less. That means that they’d start down at 40-60 miles from the field.
Geez, couldn’t they take turns napping?? And per post 18 it was a very short flight anyway.
I have heard of this by cross country freighters. They put it on auto pilot and fall asleep. They wake up over the Pacific Ocean.
OK, now that I’m retired, here’s the real story: Did we ever sleep in the cockpit? Yes; here’s how it worked:
Say I’m getting heavy eyelids enroute (at cruise altitude). The sensible approach: I turn to the other pilot and say “Bob, are you feeling OK?” If he says “yes”, I say “can you take (i.e. talk on) the radios and fly for a few minutes? I’m going to lean my chair back.”
If he says “I’m feeling really wiped out”, you figure out who is the worse off; that person gets up, stretches his legs, goes to the john, washes his face, gets a coffee, etc. The other person toughs it out ‘till he gets back, then does the same.
The dumb approach: You try to fake it. Result - BOTH of you end up in Zombie land. I suspect that’s what happened here.
How long a snooze? In most cases, it took about 5 minutes and you were feeling fine again. In 30 years of airline flying (+ 4 years flying the big jets in the Air Force) it never took over 20-25 minutes of shuteye.
What gets you that tired? Long days? Nope. Scheduling. One day you start work at 5:00 AM, the next at 10:00 PM. There’s no way you can prepare your body for that extreme kind of biorhythm change.
My experience level: Type rated in B-707/720/737/757/767 with about 16,000 hours total flight time. Lotsa east-west globe circling as a DC-8 copilot.
Rut-Roh, Reorge !! :^O
LOL!
I figgered it more likely they were busy acting out the Obama-Larry Sinclair episode.
Playing with their joysticks?
When your eyes are shut, make sure they blink.
Jack Nicholson quote:
“I warned him (Keith Ledger) about Ambien. I took it once and somebody called me in the middle of the night and I woke up in my car 50 yards from my house. I almost drove off a cliff. I didn’t know where I was. Ambien can get you. Not through excessive use, it’s just some people react more strongly than others.”
I don't know if something similar could be developed for airliners. (Yes, I realize this is an airplane and not a train, which is why I used the word "similar".)
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