...a few weeks ago headed toward Wisconsin from Phoenix, I was taken back to my way early days of aviation. One of my first jobs out of college was flying night freight in an old, beat up Piper Navajo (basically a bunch of little boxes for Purolator Courier...and Sandia Laboratories). It was a supremely crappy job. Ugly airplane, low pay and fairly dangerous (my college friend died and the guy that handed the job down to me, got it because the guy that was doing it before him, fell asleep and flew into the mountains). The upside was it was loads of single-pilot, multi-engine, IFR, Pilot in Command flight time, and I was going to need all I could get to become qualified to apply to the "real" airlines (read United, Delta, American, Northwest, TWA, Pan Am, etc). The downside was that I had to survive it first....

Here's the blog entry...

www.bubba757.com

I hope you enjoy it....

BBall

wow, that sounds terrible. I´m glad you did not fall asleep

Thanks MB!

Yeah...the journeys we call our "lives". All of us have fascinating stories to be sure.

Thanks again for peeking at my little corner of the story-telling part of the internet. Take care, and have a great day!

We just had a pilot crash on short final a few months ago here at Wurtsmith a few months back. Pilot fell asleep behind the wheel, crashed short of the runway. Had the feds snooping around the hangars for a few weeks after that, the pilot was coming to pick up some tag-along mechanics for Ypsilanti to head to their stations. Pilot error...hard to believe those mechanics probably wouldnt have made it to Ypsilanti that day had the pilot landed safely.

Just finished reading the news article about this horrible event. Sad to be sure, but doubly so if it was the end result of some poor "kid" trying to build precious flight time (maybe trying to get to "the bigs" someday...been there, done that).

I just got in from the "red-eye" Anchorage to Minneapolis/St. Paul at 0530 this morning. Long night to be sure (had some "Northern Lights" acting as our companion most of the night). Twenty-two years ago, when I first checked out on the B757, we had trips that were "2-leg red-eyes". We'd launch from KMSP in the evening hours, fly 3.5 hours to KLAX, sit for about two hours, then fly back landing just before sunrise. You'd do this three nights a week, and that would be your months flying.

I tried it ONE TIME, and said, "this is total horse-hockey" (I distinctly remember, descending into KMSP at about 0500 one morning, bent over inputting something into the FMC, and FALLING ASLEEP for about 2 seconds in a "micro-sleep"! I shook myself awake, and said..."never again"). That was the last time I ever flew a 2-leg red-eye (within a year after that, our pilots union [the Airline Pilots Association, or ALPA] told the airline that we would never fly such flights again...and we haven't).

There's a famous story from years ago, whereby an airline (IIRC correctly, it was an Eastern Airlines L-1011) was doing the same kind of "2-leg red-eye" thing, and the crew taxieed out for departure at Atlanta's Hartsfield on the second leg down to Florida somewhere. They were #1 for departure, and after several attempts by the tower to contact the jet, they finally sent a truck out to the runway (with a "cherry picker" type basket...probably a de-ice truck) to investigate. When the dude raised the basket and looked into the cockpit, ALL THREE PILOTS WERE SOUND ASLEEP. Lovely...right?

Fatigue can kill ya in any type of machine...

A friend and I were trading falling asleep stories from Northern Canada 30+ years ago. Mine were more of the micro sleep variety but his took the cake. After a long day in a Baron he started a descent (on autopilot) in good weather and fell asleep. He's not sure what woke him before it was too late but we're glad something did.