According to the FAA, all flights longer than 8 hours must carry a relief pilot and all flights longer than 12 hours are required to have two extra pilots fully qualified to land the plane.
I have no doubt it’s alarming to have one of the pilots aboard fall ill, much less die, but that’s why we insist on more than one pilot even though a single person probably could safely land an airliner under most conditions. If we have triple redundancy on the steering controls shouldn’t we have similar on the human pilot flying the machine? Oh, wait, we do.
In other words, everything functioned as intended (except, perhaps, the expired pilot). Not really newsworthy in a sense. What’s happening in Iran is of much greater import.
I don’t have a problem with not telling the passengers. Clearly the situation was well in hand, the passengers were not in danger, and it would have caused needless distress.
I travel quite a bit for my job, and much of that is internationally- you would be surprised how often people have serious problems when on a long flight.
For every 15 flights or so I’ve been on to Europe or Asia, someone keels over, needs oxygen or has a medical issue. Last year I had an emergency landing because someone had a heart attack. Surprisingly, there always seems to be a large number of nurses and doctors on board amongst the passengers.
Long flights are hard on people (off schedule, pressurized, sitting in one spot, other stuff).
Sorry to hear about this pilot though.
R
This has happened before. The only problem is that the steering wheel is on the pilot’s side so someone needs to be in the left seat after landing to steer on the ground.
What is unusual is that he died without the co-pilot knowing it.
The B777 has a steering tiller on both sides of the cockpit. In addition the nose wheel has limited steering (7 deg) available through the rudder pedals.
When I was a co-pilot on the Dash 8 which only has a tiller on the pilot’s side, I used to think about what I would do if the captain became incapacitated. I’d decided I’d probably drag him out of his seat if possible and I’d fly it from there so I could use the steering tiller on the ground. It wouldn’t be a drama if I left him in there though as the Dash 8 can be steered using rudder and differential braking plus asymmetric thrust if required. I did have a captain become incapacitated but by the time we were approaching our destination he was well enough to handle the pilot not flying duties, radio calls, checklists etc.
Yeah I guess. He can’t have complained of chest pains or anything. The article says the co-pilot thought he was sleeping but then couldn’t rouse him.
I remember reading something about the Airbus 380 having some alarmingly large number of discreet “corpse storage lockers” located around it, precisely to account for the actuarial worst case of people dying on board during a long flight.
Didn’t the Mytbusters get “talked-down” in a flight simulator?
This always comforts me to an extent.
To totally steal the excellent pun from the “mom dies during a flight” thread, that’s where you stow your carrion luggage.
Surely they would never actually do that!
I want to echo that this is absolutely tragic and not at all funny, but the CNN mobile update I got about it helpfully informed that the co-pilots would land the jet in Newark.
And my first reaction was…well, yes, as opposed to A) not landing? B) landing at one of the, uh, many airports between Belgium and New Jersey? C) having a random non-pilot land the plane?
One of life’s little ha-has: The Bones rerun last night was the episode where there was a murder (and a body) on an airplane carrying Booth & Bones.
They certainly did, i was there to witness the whole thing. And don’t call me Shirley.
Back to topic, that is eally awful, but bound to happen here and there really. I’m happy to hear that further fatality was avoided.