Wife takes over plane when pilot-husband can't fly

[SEATAC 400]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110527/ap_on_re_us/us_passenger_flies_plane

[GabethePilot 1]

Crikey, a Cirrus isn't the type of light a/c you want that to happen in.

Very powerful, responsive and a full glass cockpit no doubt ! They are like the Ferrari of light GAs.

My old pal "Al" - aka. Lord Sugar has one.

I'd much prefer an old Piper or Cessna to have that occurence!

The gal did well.

[mutley 4,498]

An interesting story, it's a good job she didn't deploy the emergency parachute system.

Thanks for posting.

[allardjd 1,853]

Fortunately she didn't need to land it either. It's thought that her pilot/husband was hypoxic and recovered somewhat after they descended to a lower altitude. He took over again and navigated to an airport and landed. Possibly his O2 feed was faulty and hers was not or something like that.

Anyway, it all ended well.

John

[Tim_A 997]

it's a good job she didn't deploy the emergency parachute system.

Fortunately it was a Cirrus. Had it been an Piper or Cessna, she wouldn't have had that option. There have already been a number of unnecessary deaths this year because--for whatever reason--the pilot didn't pull the chute.

Another nice thing about Cirri [bentley, rather than Ferrari, IMHO] and G1000/Entegra glass cockpits in general is that they are much more standardised that the old steam panels, where cockpit layouts and equipment could vary wildy from plane to plane, yet alone type to type. Which makes it a lot easier to talk someone through making a course change and a descent.

Reading between the lines, the pilot was hand flying the plane at 17000ft. Now, by inference from the altitude, this was IFR (VFR would be +500) over inhopitable terrain. I would probably have had the autopilot on - single pilot IFR can be pretty demanding, and for high performance personal transport aitcraft it's pretty much SOP. Yet the report says the first thing they had to figure out was switching on the autopilot. Thinking about it, that's probably the best single thing that happened that day, because the first detected symptom of the hypoxia was erratic flying, and if the autopilot had been on, it would likely have gone undetected, with a much less happy outcome.

[GabethePilot 1]

I doubt she would have bailed out on her own anyway. Elderly couple etc.

Luckily they were at 170 so had plenty of time to stabilise.

Personally, I think giving licenses to 70 year olds is as daft as letting them drive. Sorry, but that's how it is. Too risky... too dangerous. End of.

They don't let a 70 year old drive a 747 and ANY a/c is just as 'potentially' dangerous in terms of the damage it can do.

They won't let me fly an a/c as I have mad-cows... but at least I have periods of lucidity.

How can you be sure that a 70 year old has the capacity to fly? Do they have 6 monthly checkrides ? No. And various debilitating diseases associated with age, can come on very slowly and then quickly develop exponentially.. It can become very dangerous well before the "next 6 month test / checkup"... even if they exist... which I doubt.