Boeing test video

[stevepaa]

Joe, similar to Payne Stewart? Why would pilot oxygen fail?

[dhoward]

F/D O2 malfunction? Not turned on?
ATC lost contact early in the flight...
Looks like some problems with the AC packs?
PAX frozen, according to rescue workers...
Crew disabled, the FMC will fly the route programmed, up until missed approach and hold fix, if programmed?
No descent, until commanded, or out of fuel.
Sad day.

[Joeaksa]

Steve,

Never had oxygen fail totally, at least not in the cockpit. Anyway, the flight attendent has a "walkaround" bottle that would keep at least one of the pilots alive long enough to select 10,000 feet in the autopilot preselect window, then be able to put it in a descent mode and get it down.... if someone got on oxygen!

We are all taught to get the mask on immediately. If the cockpit does not work then go to the F/A's bottle but not doing so means you are out in a minute max and death in five minutes at this altitude.

There is no main oxygen valve in the -737 like in Payne Stewart's Learjet. It was not unusual to turn the valve off in the early Lears as they could leak out ovenight. A good captain or costar made sure it was turned on during the pre-flight.

The captain had 37 hours time in type (Lear) and copilot had 1700 hours total time in airplanes period, neither were high time pilots. Neither of which was trained at a factory certified school and neither of which were very experienced in Lears.

What I am trying to say is that they were trained by a "flight by night" school, who did not have a full motion simulator and did not have very good schooling. The training was cheap and if you survive to get 1000 hours in the airplane you knew what you were doing and were lucky. They ran out of luck and flight time in the plane far too early and it cost Payne his life... I knew and flew Payne and he was a very nice guy. Sorry to see it happen as he was supposed to fly with us from Orlando to Dallas that day and the guy paying for the flight found a cheaper company to do the flight.

We have turned the packs off during a flight test. This means no heating and no pressure coming into the plane to keep us breathing. Our current airplane at 41,000 feet and no packs turned on lost about 2-300 feet per minute out of the cabin, which is good. Even double that and nothing going to happen immediately and you just start descending to an altitude where you have enough oxygen to breath. Even if a window or seal blew out and it happened all at once, the pilots should still have more than enough time to get their masks on and start a descent, which it appears did not happen.

Its been said that pax were seen in the cockpit trying to fly the plane by the -16 crews. They probably knocked the bird off of autopilot and it started descent, but too late to save everyone due to lack of oxygen. Question is if one or more of the pax were alive, where was the Captain and why was he out of the cockpit. Voice recorder will tell a lot in this situation...

JoeA

[dhoward]

CVR good for about 1/2 hour? May not be much on there. Sounds like they left with one pack down. 737 classic had O2 valve in the cockpit, right? Lot of possibilities and a lot of speculation right now...
Slow hypoxia is rather insideous. So is CO.