Should Pilots Take Naps After Flying Low Altitude Planes?

[D H]

Two things knock me out almost immediately: TV's and riding an airplane (on an airplane, the oxygen level is knocked down a little making it real easy to fall asleep).

Nova puts me to sleep almost all the time now. Particularly if its an interesting topic. Is it the background music they use?

I have one addition to your list: 1 PM meetings. I dread them. Someone always shuts the door to avoid disturbing people who are doing real work. The room starts to warm up from all the people crammed in the room. Someone else always dim the lights in anticipation of the presentation. The presenter, inevitably someone in need of a "How to" course on giving good presentations, simply reads directly from overly dense viewgraphs in a monotone voice. Finally, someone else has to nudge D H to make him stop snoring.:zzz:

 

[BobG]

Nova puts me to sleep almost all the time now. Particularly if its an interesting topic. Is it the background music they use?

I have one addition to your list: 1 PM meetings. I dread them. Someone always shuts the door to avoid disturbing people who are doing real work. The room starts to warm up from all the people crammed in the room. Someone else always dim the lights in anticipation of the presentation. The presenter, inevitably someone in need of a "How to" course on giving good presentations, simply reads directly from overly dense viewgraphs in a monotone voice. Finally, someone else has to nudge D H to make him stop snoring.:zzz:

I love watching people walk out of those meetings. You can tell who the rookies are. They're the ones with red spots in odd places on their faces (like the middle of their forehead). They never learned the right handed orthoganol tripod method - where your thumb is under your chin, your forefinger runs up the side of your cheek, and your middle finger is between your lower lip and chin. Gives you that thoughtful appearance, plus provides stability so your face doesn't wind up hitting the table when you fall asleep.

 

[tgt]

I was on the ball for the question you actually asked. Now you're changing your question if you say the nap needs to be at a time when you don't have other commitments that are affected by taking it or not taking it. What would be the point of that? If you have nothing else to do later, or are able to get regular sleep at regular times, there's no need for a nap.

Looking back the question seemed pretty open ended. I'll describe my situation:

My sleeping pattern was good until some neighbours woke me up during very early mornings and I ended up needing naps. The neighbors aren't making such loud noises now but my sleeping pattern has been disturbed as I seem to need to take a nap at 6pm each day. It can go for 1 hour but today 2 hours. And I'm afraid I can't get to sleep until 1am hence needing a nap the next day. The nap causes me to not able to sleep early and the cycles goes on...

Hence my situation has got nothing to do with other commitments. I am pretty much forced to take the nap because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to concentrate.

What should I do?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

My father would turn on a baseball game. The white noise of the crowd put him to sleep. In those days, the announcer wouldn't fill you with useless information, just tell you what you were watching. My grandfather would just sit in a chair and sleep for 5 minutes whenever he got a chance. He was a very busy man, but always seemed relaxed.

 

[BobG]

My father would turn on a baseball game. The white noise of the crowd put him to sleep. In those days, the announcer wouldn't fill you with useless information, just tell you what you were watching. My grandfather would just sit in a chair and sleep for 5 minutes whenever he got a chance. He was a very busy man, but always seemed relaxed.

Listening to night games on the radio had the same effect - almost.

The first few years I listened to baseball games, I got to listen to Harry Caray and Jack Buck broadcast the Cardinals games when they had Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Curt Flood, plus a trio of young pitchers in Nellie Briles, Steve Carlton, and Larry Jaster. Carlton obviously had the best career of the three, but Nellie Briles had the much cooler name.

Then I moved to Akron and got to listen to Herb Score and the Indians. I think that's when staying awake for the end of the game started to seem less important. But I still remember that first year when the Indians had two great prospects in Richie Scheinblum and Lou Piniella (they were even on the same baseball card where it stated in plain writing that they were great prospects!). Unfortunately, that's the year baseball added the Royals and the Pilots, so the Indians gave up Piniella in the expansion draft while protecting the better of two in Scheinblum. He had such a great start: 0/4 in his first game. But, his 3rd game was an incredible 0 for 7! In fact, Scheinblum went hitless for the entire month of April! It was incredible! And, naturally, Lou Piniella won rookie of the year for the Royals. And so started over two decades of following the hapless Indians - at least until their great pennant race against the White Sox in '94.

I'm not sure which was more memorable: 10-cent-beer night in 1974 or Joe Charboneau celebrating his 1980 rookie of the year award by showing reporters how he could drink beer through his nose.

 

[lisab]

I flew once to Las Vegas. I got up at 4:00 A.M. and made breakfast for my family, got the bags into the car and headed to the airport to be three hours early for the flight as was suggested by the travel agent. When we got there, the monorail that was supposed to take us from the parking lot to the terminal lost power and we had to wait for a shuttle bus. Our terminal was the last one on the route. We got to the ticket counter and had a pleasant conversation with the checkin clerk concerning the fact that our tickets were not recorded in their system. After a warm chat which bordered on mayhem, we paid the fee for too much luggage and headed for the gate. At the security checkpoint we took off our shoes, belts, hats, jackets, and well, modesty prohibits me to go on. We boarded the plane and prepared for a short snooze when we were informed, in the nicest possible way, that the plane we were on was experiencing a problem with the captain's cup holder and we needed to get on a different one. Once everything was sorted out, we started for Las Vegas just as our luggage started for Timbuctu. The flight was pleasant enough considering how tight the seat was, how little leg room there was, how many people you had to wait behind to get to the lavatory, how infrequently the guy next to me bathed, and how many times the stewardess had to tell us that the captain had turned on the seatbelt sign because of turbulance as if I couldn't feel it in my gut. I was pretty starving by the time the stewardess got to me and asked if I wanted the chicken or the steak. By this time she had had it with surley passengers who take, take, take, and give nothing in return. I said I preferred salmon and she asked me if I would like to step outside for a moment. I ended up with a bread sandwich interupted by what was probably balogna. For some reason that I couldn't put my finger on, when I got off the plane I felt lousy. Moonbear might be right, perhaps it was the dry air in the airplane. Las Vegas was great though.

Serves you right, booking your flight on Air Bedlam.

My 16-year-old daughter flatly refuses to fly anymore. Part phobia, part...well, read what Jimmy posted. Perhaps she's the sensible one in the family.

 

[Holocene]

I fly small, non-pressurized airplanes at fairly low altitudes.

After a flight, I ALWAYS feel like a nap. Just something about flying I guess. It does take a lot of concentration and is demanding for the pilot...even if it's only a Cessna. There are a lot of things going on that many passengers do not realize.