He sounded fine and calm to me. Can’t see any evidence of hypoxia. Suggest people are looking for an issue here.
In the audio file they mention about clearing snow on the ground. So without engine heat, it was probably very cold up there. The descent probably took in the region of 15-20 minutes.
I too wondered if he was mildly hypoxic. Rather than cool, I thought he sounded a little “out of it”. Thoughts seemed to come slowly. But people react differently to stress.
I was surprised at that amount of radio calls going on. I appreciate that the blank time was cut out, but still a lot of calls going on, when the pilot would have been busy.
Niner_Mike wrote:
The guy sounded mildly hypoxic and was very cold.
I don’t know what time of the year this was but in Syracuse NY, in winter and on the surface, it is often very cold – the average January temp is -4 C. Never mind at 11,000 feet with no heat.
The terrain is not high in that area.
Nice work.
The guy sounded mildly hypoxic and was very cold. Was it a good idea to climb too 11’000 ft if cloudbase is at 4’300ft (no idea on terrain though)?
8 hours of fuel on board a Cessna 172?
I once had an engine failure at FL410 in Spain and started the floatdown, with the controller screaming at me that what I was doing was very dangerous and I must climb again to my assigned altitude. After a couple of fruitless exchanges I broadcast a request for someone to explain to her in Spanish what was going on, which an Iberia duly did.
And Spanish ATC are the best paid in Europe 
… I thought the same ;-)
“Descend and maintain 3000” for a plane with an engine failure is a somewhat comical ATC instruction. I guess he must have still had partial power. Cloud base at 4300’ isn’t too bad either in that situation.
Amazing. Wonder what gets this guy excited – he just sounds terminally bored throughout.
Great job from the pilot
