Hypoxia Incident Audio Released Last Week

Air traffic communications recorded on 16 November 2012 and released in a new audio file on 6 March provide an edge-of-the-seat experience of hypoxia incapacitation.

The aircraft involved was a Piaggio P180 Avanti twin turbo, tail # N501PM, which had just departed Dallas, Texas (KDFW) heading to Michigan.

The recording begins with Fort Worth Center (ZFW) controller LouElla Hollingsworth instructing One Papa Mike to climb from FL270 to FL310.

AOPA Live, 16 November 2012 incident audio with slide captioning

Hollingsworth received the NATCA Medal of Safety and was recently interviewed on TV news programs.  The links below include streaming video with more of the story.

13 March, CBS News interview

14 March, ABC News interview

This incident is not recorded in the ASRS, ASIAS, or NTSB databases.

2 thoughts on “Hypoxia Incident Audio Released Last Week”

  1. It’s interesting. Good action on the controller and other aircraft in the vicinity but I saw once or twice where the aircraft called back the wrong number and the controller did not acknowledge or correct them. In this situation that’s not really an issue, but there was an incident a ways back where two PanAm Training flights were doing cross country flights and due to controller and pilot error the one flying over the mountains was vectored right into a mountain side. Good work from all parties involved to save this crew though.

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