A post for airplane nerds only…
Mountains climbing nearly to 12,000′ separate the Los Angeles basin from the Palm Springs and Joshua Tree area. A layer of clouds between 4000′ and 6000′ covered all of the Los Angeles airports. Thus it was necessary to proceed from Sedona into Los Angeles on an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance. The minimum enroute altitude on the direct airway from Twentynine Palms into LA is 13,500′ due to the fact that this airway goes straight over some of the tallest peaks. I was flying along at 14,000′, breathing bottled oxygen, and got called by ATC: “Fly heading 230 for a train.”
I banked the airplane and looked down wondering what kind of monster freight train they might have out West that would require an airplane at 14,000′ to adjust its course.
Then I realized that perhaps the call was “Flying heading 230 for terrain.”
Damn, I’ve climbed around the peak at Mt. Evans (14,264′, Colorado) and didn’t need bottled air. You were only sitting on your butt. Just an extra precaution?
You lose mental acuity at those elevations and therefore the FAA requires supplemental oxygen beginning at 12,500 feet. There is actually evidence that things like night vision are affected as low as 5000 feet so this is a very real phenomena to be concerned with.
The average age of pilots is about 60, so that accounts for the rule.
Messner climbed Everest without oxygen, as have scores after him, and managed to keep his senses about him in a very dangerous environment.
It is good to see that we have so many high-altitude physiologists reading this Weblog!
Rules for climbers, e.g., the ones at http://www.greatoutdoors.com/published/climb/healthfitness/climbingatnewheights/, aren’t very practical for aviation. The climbers say “try to arrive at your destination several days in advance” and “At altitude, a good rule of thumb is to sleep no more than 1,000 feet higher each night above 10,000 feet.” How do you apply these rules to a turbocharged aircraft that climbs 2,000 feet … per MINUTE?
FAA rules are generally established for the young fit men who fly commercially (the mandatory retirement age for an airline pilot is 60). Hence the 12,500′ rule to which Peter refers. However there is a lot of individual variation even among the fit in terms of sensitivity to altitude. In fact some people who feel fine 100 times at, say, 14,000′ will go up there that 101st time and suffer terribly for no apparent reason. So partly it is a good idea to use oxygen to guard against the possibility of a severe reaction. But it is probably a good idea for flights above 9,000′-11,000′ for most pilots just to boost mental acuity.
One thing that makes flying challenging is that the airplane goes at its speed and requires you to think at its speed. Most other activities can be done at your own pace and if you want to stop and think you can stop and think. You can stop and think while you’re flying, of course, but the airplane keeps moving at somewhere between 100 and 300 mph, possibly closer to a mountainside hidden in the clouds…. It is impressive, of course, that some people have climbed Mt. Everest after weeks of preparation and acclimatization to altitude. But flying an airplane under FAA rules is about getting your passengers from point A to point B in safety. They didn’t ask to accept the risks that Everest climbers accept and they don’t want to be in a movie about terror and challenge and ultimately death.
Why didn’t you just fly VFR over the top at more reasonable altitudes, since the cloud layer was topping at 6000′?
Then, just ask for a pop-up IFR clearance somewhere around POC VOR, and go from there. I don’t know how ATC works in your neck of the woods, but around here, they handle pop-ups with applomb, courtesy, and sometimes, even cheerfulness. Bonus points if you have your SoCal TEC routes page out and ask for the route closest to what you need by name.
-jav
Javier: I had been cruising already at 10,500′ to clear the mountains between Sedona, AZ and Lake Havasu. And therefore was already on oxygen. And I had already filed IFR for the last half of the flight because I’m not very familiar with LA airspace. So climbing to 14,000′ didn’t seem like a life-changing event though apparently it has gotten quite a few of the readers here very excited.
I’m all for banning all private air flights and having more commercial flights added … in many cities, the volume of traffic has grown so much… …the skys should belong to us all…
Oh yes, Javier, I forgot to mention that the briefers had called for turbulence below 14,000′ and that there was a pilot report of “severe turbulence” with 2,000 fpm updrafts. So I wasn’t in a hurry to get down lower and become intimate with the mountains.
Naum: Your proposal to ban private aircraft would work well in a planned Soviet-style economy where removing resources from one sector frees them up for another. How exactly do you imagine that, in a free market economy, keeping the rich from going golfing, fishing, and partying in their Gulfstreams will cause the addition of more 737 flights for the rabble? Certainly it is not airspace congestion or conflicts with private aircraft that cause airlines to go bankrupt. Most cities in the U.S. are desperately anxious for more rich people to show up in private jets. One corporate looter such as Jack Welch shows up in one of the GE jets (he’s retired but I read that he still gets to ride on them as much as he wants). The GE shareholders pay for $10,000 of jet fuel at the local gas station. Jack himself buys a $10 million 7th home. He stays in a $12,000/night hotel suite while his 7th home is being redecorated. You’d need to attract 500 average folks to equal the boost to the economy of a single rich guy like Jack Welch.
Philip, it was a troll, I realize it’s not a feasible solution and I’m no expert so I can’t ascertain whether or not more private jets == less commercial flight scheduling… it sure seems that way though…
It’s just a blast based on my frustration with my flying XP … being stuffed into a tube along with 200 others, having to endure long waits in airports (post 9/11 has made this a lost worse) not designed to accomodate travelers (why is it every hotel now has high speed net access availability, most for free, while I can’t even get payfor access in most airlines, let alone a sandwich after 8p…)…
… God I hate flying but I’ve been forced to do it once or twice a week for the last year… I’m going to start making it a mandatory stipulation that I cannot travel unless it’s first class, which will make scheduling even tougher…
Funny you bring up Neutron Jack … he’s probably singlehandedly been responsible for the loss of millions of jobs, as corporate CEO seek to emulate his GE performance and search to slash everything and become a shell company, a brand name that can basically act as a toll booth, but a powerful tool booth that can dictate the fortunes of lesser companies… not so sure that the existence of “Jack Welch” characters is beneficial to societal fortunes
Grr, no edit, sentence should have said “..payfor access in most airports…” …
“… guard against the possibility of a severe reaction …”: Any citations or specific cases for this? This simply does not happen, if you mean a sudden reaction that takes place over seconds or minute. You have plenty of time to use oxygen after you notice you are getting a headache or other reaction. The risk from “descrease in mental acuity” is pretty much balanced out by the risk of explosion from the oxygen.
As for mountaineering, sure the Everest example was an exageration, but you’ve never flown that high and never will. In the range of 10,000-14,000 feet, backpackers and climbers go from sea level to those altitudes in half a day all the time in the Sierras and the Rockies (most of the way in their cars). Admittedly though flyers may do it in only one hour.
BTW, your double-spacing-between-sentences hack isn’t working in the comments: get to work and fix that! I’m having a lot of trouble recognizing the ends of your sentences.
Kleman, the regs are not optional, even for folks who think that they are smarter than the entire FAA. In any case I’m not sure that you do understand airplanes as well as the FAA. It doesn’t take “only one hour” to get to 14,000′ in a cheap turbocharged airplane such as a Mooney but rather more like 10 minutes from sea level. And that Mooney can keep climbing right up to 25,000′. Airline pilots learn about “seconds of useful consciousness” following decompression. At 37,000′ it is about 7 seconds. Down in the 20 thousands it is more like 30 seconds. http://www.mountainflying.com/hypoxia.htm is a good intro and notes that “Intellectual impairment is an early sign and makes it improbable for the individual to comprehend his own disability” (i.e., many people won’t realize that they need oxygen before they become unconscious).
Eventually I think I’ll get around to buying a pressurized airplane such as a Piper Malibu or a turbine-powered aircraft of some sort. Then I won’t have to deal with supplemental oxygen except in an emergency.
Philip, do you think that mistakingly hearing “Fly heading 230 for a train” instead of “Fly heading 230 for terrain” is such an early sign of intellectual impairment as a result of flying at high altitude, or just a (funny) coincidence?
Patrick: Not sure. I do think that, despite the oxygen, I make more small mistakes at high altitude than at low, e.g., getting a digit wrong in a VOR frequency or whatever and having to correct it. I’ve never noticed this when driving or walking around at high elevations in the Rockies or Sierra, though I have noticed getting a headache sometimes, but maybe because I wasn’t trying to do much of anything except put one foot in front of the other.
grate
Philip,
You might want to consider buying oximeter for your flying. They make small batter powered ones you can clip on your finger in flight and it’ll give you your blood’s oxygen saturation level. This is the best way to measure the onset of imparement. Self-assessment only works so far, because the symptoms of hypoxia include a feeling of well-being and relaxation.
As for making your way into the LA basin, those of us based here would probably tell you that flying at 14k isn’t likely to save you much in the way of punishment when you’re passing over the Banning/Palm Springs area. The worst turbulence I’ve ever experienced was in that region. I was on my way to an aerobatic competition in Borrego Springs and got whacked with such extreme turbulence I couldn’t even keep the plane upright. Even though I was strapped down, I still banged my head on the canopy several times.
If you really want to see some serious “a train”, fly up the Owens Valley toward Mammoth. The valley floor is maybe 1500 MSL while just a mile away the terrain will rise to 15,000 feet. It’s well worth the trip, though. It’s the only place I can think of where you’ll see things like this:
http://www.rapp.org/url/?ZKJ0PHJK
That’s a photo of the Owens Dry Lake. No retouching or editing. I’ve seen that lakebed appear bright red, flourescent green, black, white, and every color in between.
Welcome to California. 🙂