Falling asleep

Who here has fallen asleep while at the controls, and for how long?

 

Only long enough to sober up

 

heard of a guy that routinely set the auto pilot then took a nap. you can guess how that eventually ended.

 

Me too. Hearing his tail number would wake him up.

 

center is willing to chitchat / break radio silence for those late cross country trips, just have them check in with you frequently and chat to keep from dozing off... generally they are not busy either and need to stay awake as well

 

There was one here not so long ago.. ended up going into controlled airspace while asleep! Got grounded for his troubles..

The subsequent report said "Tiredness, illness and country and western music" were to blame lol..

 

I can not remember all the times (in a 3 man crew) I've fallen asleep. there was the one time when all 3 of us AND 2 jump seaters were all asleep crossing the Atlantic.

 

I would fall asleep going north from Saudi Arabia to Iraq during Desert Storm while my young pilot was wide awake and wide eyed. Coming back south, I would be wide awake after dropping and guiding the precision guided munitions and he would fall asleep. Crew coordination. I would wake him up for the landing.

 

From one of my instructors at Beeville, TX

"Thou shalt not sleep in a single seat jet over the ocean."

Bill

PS You'll wake up with that first chug of the engine from fuel starvation

 

This is a hard thread to comment on. On the 747, the airplane will wake you up if you fall asleep. First up is a silent EICAS message saying, PILOT RESPONSE. I believe that shows up about 20 minutes after no activity. About 3 minutes later you get a few sounds to go with it. Then if there's still no response, it'll give you all it's got.

So Boeing's aware pilots sleep on long haul flights.....

 

Reminds me of a Howard Hughes story. He was flying a Connie solo from LA. to NY. After leaving LA he put the airplane on auto pilot and attended to some complicated business problems. After a while when he was working on his papers he noticed something whiz by the airplane. It was a peak full of rocks, the Rockies. He had set the auto pilot at an altitude far below the height of the mountains into which he was traveling. He reset the AP and continued his work. This was related to me by a Boeing test pilot who flew with Hughes when he was test flying the -80 prior to purchasing 707's for TWA. The rest of this story is as bizarre as the Connie incident. Hughes wife, Jean Simmons, was also on board.

 

On diesel locomotives, there is a button that the engineer has to push, when prompted by an audible signal, at regular intervals, to prove to the machine that he is awake and alert. If he doesn't hit the button within a prescribed number of seconds, the locomotive will automatically come to a halt. It looks like what Lou is describing is similar to that. Maybe all aircraft should be required to have such a system.

 

A dead mans switch. Some are levers that have to be moved back and forth.
Aircraft? You want the engines to stop if the pilot falls asleep?

 

Never flown the 400 but sometimes a short nap before landing is a good thing.

 

I don't know about sleep, that would make me step outside the airplane ...

 

No, but maybe a loud horn should go off if the pilot doesn't do something at certain intervals.

Or maybe all aircraft need an automatic inflatable autopilot like the one in "Airplane!"

 

That's a 'clacker" that goes off when you run out of fuel and the aircraft does an inverted roll at MMO toward the land or sea.

 

Wait, Howard Hughes was married to the Kiss lead singer? I didn't even know he was gay!!,😜😜😜

 

This was the real Jeanne Simmons way before the one you are talking about. Very clever. The one of whom I speak was a very pretty lady.

 

Are you guys thinking of Jean Peters? She was married to Hughes. Regardless, Jean Simmons, the British actress, was an absolute fox back in the day!...T

 

Wasn't that the purpose of the Twin Cessna fuel system? With all those tanks, you were bound to run one dry eventually, and the negative Gs would wake you up.

 

It was Jean Peters, my slipping clutch again. Both these ladies were beautiful and i was simply dazzled for a moment.

 

I don't blame ya, Bob! I'm just glad someone else on F-chat likes the lovely ladies from Hollywood's Golden Age!...T