Medical Matters

Crew observed right main landing gear unsafe indication on extension at destination. Emergency gear extension procedures did not result in safe indication. After landing, right main gear collapsed as aircraft came to a stop. Significant damage was discovered to the right main gear actuator support structure.

Youve just crashed in a remote area. You and your passengers are injured. Will you have the equipment and knowledge to survive until youre rescued?

The best way to fully understand hypoxias effects is in an altitude chamber. But theres more to high-altitude flight than just being able to breathe.

Fatigue can have a measurable impact, even when you think youre rested. Heres what the studies say and how you can fight back.

Climbing to the flight levels puts your body through major changes that mere oxygen cant address. Heres whats going on and some tips on how to minimize the effects.

Pressure chamber training can help prevent the hazards of high-altitude flight. Hint: Hypoxia is just part of the problem.

Medications – whether over-the-counter, prescription or recreational – have found their place in the aviation accident record

There comes a time in almost every pilots career when the need arises to transit high terrain or overfly weather at an altitude in the low to mid teens.

Sometimes the climb is planned, such as crossing a mountain pass in the west or the Appalachians in the east. Sometimes its not, like when trying to overfly building cumulus clouds on a summer morning. In either case, the flight to higher altitude is generally intended to be brief and the need for supplemental oxygen is often written off.

These flights seem to start out smoothly. Once you climb, you wonder why you dont fly high more often. Things are going well – very well, in fact. You realize you havent felt this well in years….

Visual perception starts with a complex image analysis done by neurons in the eye. That data is sent to the brain, which interprets information from the eyes by using information gained from prior experience (and some fancy processing tricks). Unlike a photograph, where what you see is what you get, real life visual perception hinges largely on things that are inferred.

Consequently, you can be fooled fairly easily when you place yourself in environments and circumstances that violate the visual rules that you learned through prior experience. Sometimes the fooling around can be fun, as with textbook optical illusions. Other times however, vision can fool you into a tragic mistake.

A…

Ask any pilot in the lounge about oxygen and flying and youll get, Well, youve got to have oxygen on above 14,000 feet, and above 12,500 feet if youre going to be there for more than half an hour. Ask the same pilot how much oxygen and youre likely to get a puzzled look.

The FARs outline when to use oxygen and the Airmans Information Manual says cannulas may be used up to 18,000 feet. But other than that the aviation bibles are mute on the issue.

Pilots are left to guess how much oxygen they need as they climb into the oxygen altitudes.

In addition, lower fliers can be left wondering what to make of conflict between the regulatory oxygen altitudes and evidence that hypoxia…