Forget something……?

On 2nd November 2009 the crew of a QANTAS  B767 ‘forgot’ to put the landing gear down just prior to landing at Sydney.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/11/04/334358/qantas-suspends-two-pilots-for-failing-to-deploy-landing.html

Why might a crew forget to lower their landing gear? Apart from being distracted or a break down in communication – might the crew be suffering from Aerotoxic Syndrome – which is well known for destroying memories (thank God for checklists….) but never ever (yet) mentioned in any accident / incident reports.

The crew and lawyers might be pleased to know that there will shortly be several different medical tests which will prove exposure to toxic gases and possibly explain their lapse.

Now, in addition to the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) that stopped them from actually driving the expensive jet into the ground – the medical tests should be a very useful defence for the hapless crew.

Selective technology – isn’t it inevitable and wonderful?

This blog was planned to end on a humorous note…….. but I just forgot what I was going to say…..

 

 

 

 

Dave Carroll goes Aerotoxic…

Dave Carroll (of United Broke my Guitar fame) knows about AEROTOXIC.

Now we just have to wait for him to be exposed on a fume event flight and then he WILL write another song…

‘Die in air trashed my health’?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Don’t worry, the air is perfectly safe….

Imagine landing at Heathrow with 6 passengers losing conciousness to be confronted by this man mumbling ‘Don’t worry the air is perfectly safe…..’

 

 

 

 

On Saturday 31st October a BA B 777 landed at Heathrow with 6 unconcious passengers on board after a ‘normal’ flight from Newark, US.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224282/Medical-alert-series-passengers-mysteriously-faint-mid-flight-way-Britain.html

Moments later space men dressed for a toxic spillage event arrived on the aircraft. ‘Don’t worry as the air is perfectly safe and ……’

The extraordinary thing is that nobody can imagine what might have happened?

Could it have been a hot oven, spilled dried ice or…..The Aerotoxic Association has absolutely no idea what might have been the cause.

Maybe it is time that the BBC trawled through their archives and found the piece on ‘Aerotoxic Syndrome’ from September 24th 2009?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8270972.stm

The lack of joined up thinking / action is …….breathtaking.

Professor Nutt – Matrix of harm

 Professor Nutt and most people know that alcohol / cannabis / tobacco are all  drugs and are mostly taken voluntarily BUT how would they deal with organophosphates which are taken involuntarily by aircrew and passengers?

 

Professor Nutt and others have been arguing over the classification of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco and their relative effects. Professor Nutt argues that horse riding is more dangerous – ‘as it kills more people’.

A  ‘matrix of harm’ is used to measure the relative risks but it is all based on known abuse – what about the drugs that are taken involuntarily or are not even known about by aircrew and passengers?

Most never know that the air they breathe is laced with organophosphates and other toxic chemicals during ‘fume events’. That’s why the airlines don’t tell people afterwards. That’s why there are no toxic fume detectors fitted…..

So how is the matrix made up?

1. The physical harm to the individual.
2. The tendency of the drug to induce dependence.
3. The effect of the drug use on family and community.

So lets see how the effect of tricresyl phosphate TCP – a drug – affects victims…

1. TCP turns ‘normal’ people into an intoxicated, vegatable state.
2. Aircrew have no escape, they are frequently exposed to the drug. Passengers have no protection on board the airliner to a fume event.
3. Aircrew lose flying jobs, respect, health, family, house…….

So Professor Nutt, when you have completed your studies on the people who choose to abuse their health – perhaps you will turn your attention to those who have their health trashed by the airliners that they innocently fly on.

People deserve the choice – at least they should be told when they have been exposed to ‘drugs’.

 

Andy Murray fed up with blood test

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/andymurray/6106682/US-Open-Britains-Andy-Murray-frustrated-by-intrusive-tennis-drug-testing-protocol.htmll                  

Andy Murray is fed up with being tested for illicit drugs.

 Meanwhile aircrew have highly abnormal amounts of chemicals in their blood (including tricresyl phosphate – an organo phosphate) which leads to brain and central nervous system damage  but their blood is never tested.

And even when aircrew blood is tested by experts the results are not believed. Very convenient.

Isn’t it ironic that we fret about sprotsmen’s intentional abuse of drugs and yet professional aircrew appear to be an exception to the rule – what would the passengers say - if they knew?

Well, at least we know what one passenger – Andy Murray – would say. 

How do they get away with it?

Smokin’ plane brings Gatwick to standstill

Gatwick Airport was forced to close, on Friday 24th July, after a plane made an emergency landing.

The Flybe Dash 8 aircraft, with 46 passengers on board, was en route to Cardiff from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

It is believed that it put down at the West Sussex airport because of a smoke problem.

“I could see there was smoke in the cabin. It started collecting along the roof and seemed to be getting thicker,” said Shayne Krige a passenger on the plane. Krige added that passengers aboard the plane were not ordered into the brace position for landing but he said there was a huge feeling of relief when the plane finally touched down.

All the passengers and crew were safely evacuated.

A Flybe spokesperson said. “The priority landing, at which emergency vehicles were deployed by the airport as a precautionary measure, followed a suspected technical fault. All 46 passengers disembarked safely and without incident and will be re-accommodated at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Engineers are looking into what caused the cabin to fill with smoke.

The team at Aerotoxic.org will be stayin’ on the case to see what caused this.

Main thing is everyone got out ok…

Guitarist gets fitting revenge on United Airlines

Did you hear the one about the guitarist who was so appalled by the dismissive attitude of one of the world’s largest airlines that he wrote a song about it and posted it on YouTube? The result was that he became a hero to many, while U.A were humiliated into an apology.

No? Well watch the video here, you’ll laugh your socks off, which is more than can be said for U.A.

The video tells the story of Dave Carroll, a Canadian folk rock musician, who was travelling with his band from Halifax to Nebraska on said airline. While changing planes in Chicago they witnessed baggage handlers hurling their luggage about, including Mr Carroll’s guitar. When they got to Nebraska, the guitar was smashed.

United Airlines was hardly living up to its  ”friendly skies” promotional image here. In fact Dave was witnessing the true cattle-truck reality of its services.

Anyway, Mr Carroll complained – but rather than getting any sort of apology or recompense for his broken guitar he met with a ’sorry can’t help you’ response. But Dave was determined to take it further and after a year of complaining and getting nowhere he felt the time had come to make a song and dance about it. So the YouTube video was created.

The video was an instant success getting 2.6 million hits. Dave and his band, Sons of Maxwell, found themselves on CBS News and even on The Oprah Winfrey Show. “It’s just incredible considering where my career was last week,” Carroll observed, noting that sales of his band’s other albums and hits on its website were both soaring. “It’s overwhelming,” he said.

Since all this exposure Dave has recieved $3,000 from U.A (which has been donated to charity) – almost three times as much as he originally asked for. He’s also been given two guitars by Taylor guitars.

So a good ending for Dave Carroll and hats of to him for persisting. Now I really must dust off that old banjo I’ve had lying around for years. The “Aerotoxic Anthem” is just waiting to be written.

This may be just what we need to get the airlines to listen…potential collaborators please form an orderly queue!

Jet Lag?

Nearly everyone suffers from jet lag when they fly. But could jet lag actually be down to chemical poisoning?

We all assume that the half dead feeling we sometimes have when getting off a flight is down to jet lag and is caused by the disruption to our body clocks – especially when flying long distances (but not always, some people have ‘jet lag’ after only a couple of hours in the air – surely not long enough to disrupt the body clock).

But what if that jet lag feeling is caused by something else? What if you’ve unwittingly been breathing in contaminated cabin air – air that has been filtered through the plane’s engines (bleed air) and has picked up some noxious chemicals on the way. These chemicals can affect your central nervous system and give you – guess what? – ‘jet lag’ type symptoms.

We take jet lag for granted – that’s not surprising considering the use of bleed air in the air conditioning units goes back to the sixties. For most people it’s always been with us.

Boeing 767 forced to land as cockpit fills with smoke

Looking through Google today I noticed there have been more and more smoke related incidents on aircraft. Frankly, at the moment, I can’t keep up!

Here’s one from 1 April 09 – and it certainly wouldn’t have been an April fool for those on board.

An airliner that reportedly had smoke in its cockpit and engine trouble while enroute from England to the Washington, D.C area landed without incident at Bangor International Airport (Maine, U.S).

United Airlines Flight 923 was traveling from Heathrow Airport to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia, but was rerouted to BIA where the Boeing 767 landed safely, said BIA director Rebecca Hupp.

Hupp said one of the plane’s two jet engines was  not functioning. “Airplanes are designed to be able to operate with one engine out,” Hupp said. “It’s not that dire.”

Well maybe not ‘dire’ – if you mean the plane didn’t crash. That’s the good news. But what about the smoke filled cockpit? Here’s hoping the pilots were unaffected by the cocktail of chemicals they had the pleasure of breathing in.

There were 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board. Emergency crews were standing by but were not needed.

The plane was manufactured in 1992, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

Boeing 747 fills with smoke. Passengers struggle to breathe

British Airways was flying a team of engineers from London to Phoenix on Saturday to inspect a Boeing 747 that filled with smoke the previous night and forced hundreds of passengers to evacuate.

Airline spokesman John Lampl says the 298 passengers who were on board Flight 288 as it prepared to take off late Friday were being rebooked onto flights to London from Phoenix, Los Angeles or Denver on Saturday.

More than a dozen people suffered minor injuries when they used the jumbo jet’s emergency slides to evacuate. Lampl says one passenger and one of the 18 crew members were hospitalized overnight but were being released on Saturday.

A Phoenix Fire Department spokeswoman says no fire was found and crews suspect an electrical problem.

During the  ordeal several passengers complained of breathing difficulties – with the worst affected being young children and babies.

So was this a fume event? The Aerotoxic Association is monitoring the story and will post updates.

Watch the video here