These human factors

Hello!

Human fators? Isn’t that this subject that we had to pass for the PPL… It all seemed quite easy at the time, mostly common sense and full of stuff we already knew: don’t drink and fly, rest well, the seat of the pans position, passenger briefing, survival, and… h???

Yesteday a colleague of mine suddenly felt ill at work, suffering the following symptoms:

-Pens and needles in his feet and hands
-Very cold feet and hands
-Difficulty breathing

What was the matter with him? He felt otherwise “ok”, he was not weak, he was not ill with flu, he had not eatean anything different, no asthma history, just these serious needles, all the way to his jaw and neck and difficulty breathing.

Well, returning from the GP where he was driven, it turned out he had been suffering from “hyperventilation”. Does that ring a bell?

I was slightly annoyed at myself because as soon as I heard that, it all came back to me: too much oxygen in the blood basically, or rather put it differently, an upset balance between carbone dioxyde and oxygen, with the easy-to-apply remedy of breathing into a bag to restore it. That’s what the GP asked him to do and sure enough that’s what it was.

I know I’m not a GP but I did study all that stuff. Trouble is, it didn’t click at the time. Was it because I was not flying and therefore not “tuned” with the part of the brain that knew? Anyway, I might have a look at this hyperventilation thing again as well as its friend hypoxia. At least recognise the symptoms and know what to do in case.

The GD question would be why this colleague developped this in the first place, not being stressed or ill or anything in particular and only seating 4 meters above ground level on the first floor.

Anyway, thought I’d share that. Anyone having had to deal with similar issues with passengers?

Steph