The Hazard of Oz

A 337 breaks up and rains down from 27,000 feet. Amazingly, the right seat passenger lives to tell how it happened.

Monday, July 01, 2002 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Bottled oxygen is fed into a mask in order to create a little island of air that is abnormally rich in oxygen around the user’s nose and mouth. [Shutterstock, not the subject airplane]

Key Takeaways:

A fatal aviation accident occurred when a pilot and assistant unknowingly breathed compressed air instead of oxygen at high altitude, leading to severe hypoxia and loss of control.
The incident starkly illustrates the dangers of hypoxia, which can cause impaired judgment and be fatal, especially when pilots mistakenly believe their oxygen system is functioning.
Pilots are strongly encouraged to use pulse oximeters to reliably monitor blood oxygen levels, prevent insidious hypoxia, and manage oxygen consumption effectively for safe high-altitude flights.

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If you’ve ever been troubled by doubts about the plausibility of Dorothy’s being carried off in her house by a tornado and then dumped back on the ground, house and all, without injury to herself or Toto, an accident that took place a few years ago should persuade you that it really could have happened.

A Cessna 337D Skymaster, an unpressurized, turbocharged twin modified with a floor-mounted camera in the cabin, departed its home base in order to do some aerial photography. The 3,100-hour private pilot and his assistant were aboard. After shooting three locations, they landed at another airport. There the pilot filed an IFR flight plan and “set up” the portable oxygen system, which had been charged that morning, for the next flight. This time, they would be climbing to 25,000 feet.