Would anyone of you really fly in the confines of a single airplane with a mask, gloves and go through the whole process of desinfecting e.t.c. every time you train? It is quite enough that one of the people inside sneezes during a flight and the whole cabin, masks nonwithstanding, will be totally contaminated.
For me the question arises now directly as by May11 Switzerland reopens flight training, but I am personally very reluctant to go fly under these conditions.
I wonder how driving instruction is handled? the conditions are almost the same, apart from the fact that one can get out of the car quite quickly, and learning to drive may be a tad more important to reinstate than GA, as quite possibly many people will understandably be reluctant to commute by public transport. What works there, should work for us.
Hi Snoopy,
Unfortunately this is too close too home for me, as the wife is ultra high risk. So reconsider the chain.
How so you get your car keys out to load the groceries? With gloves on or off? Do you then return the keys to your pocket? Is your pocket now potentially contaminated? Will you touch f your pocket once home?
which is why there are sooo many hygiene points to hit, especially if you consider really actually being in a position of being exposed.
The gloves do help as a reminder to not touch your face, until you get used to them.
I wrote a basic list above in my 1st post but I actually do more than I wrote, very diligently.
I am however very heavily reliant on the effectiveness of the alcohol gels/rubs, and antibacterial wipes.
Quite possibly it has all been pointless as I may have not been within 1km of a covid virus spore, but will never know.
Snoopy, that procedure is good, and keeps your car controls clean and saves having to disinfect them. The biggest hazard by probably 100x is the trolley handle. Touched by hundreds… The individual items you are buying might have been touched by 1 person, and nowadays they are probably wearing gloves (or should be!). So by touching all those items with the same gloves with which you touch the trolley handle you are nicely contaminating all the food. It is easier to have a 2nd person doing the driving and you load the trolley. Or if just 1 of you, drive it with one hand and load with the other. And it’s easy to forget and make a mistake…
How this translates to flying… I think you have to assume everything in the cockpit is equally infected. One can wipe the big levers with IPA but it will take longer to do the various little knobs and switches. Today I saw something on the news where they were wiping airliner cockpits; might be something to do with Wizz Air which has started flying.
Another thing one could do is to fly a plane which hasn’t been flown for a few days. Not really economical…
I think you are all overstating the individual risk…
No symptoms, no travel and no contact with infected persons in past 2weeks, no person at risk in households, both wearing mask, aircraft sanitised, can we go flying?
The whole show has to stop when anyone in the school get infected & tested positive, not rocket science ! listing all possibilities how an individual can catch it is probably not the ideal way to spend the next 2years
If the virus is circulating (from reported numbers that grows exponentially), surely I will not go flying even in a hazmat suit
RobertL18C wrote:
Perhaps we will go back to instructing in two hole tandem Stearmans with full helmetAt last the zero to hero assembly line will learn hard core stick and rudder skills.
That’s one of the benefits of EGTN indeed.
I´ve been waiting for the ATOs to re-open for a few weeks now. Further north in a different state commercial schools got exempted and started training again about a week ago. Not so in my club and commercial school, we´ll probably have to wait at least two more weeks.
Since I don´t have any high-risk individuals in my family and because of the low numbers of new infections in our state I will happily start instructing again, and I would also do it without wearing masks or gloves, if allowed. I don´t think wearing a face mask in the confined space of a Katana, ventilation wide open due to summer heat, would make much of a difference anyway.
What really annoys me is the stupidity of current regulations. I am allowed to fly with my neighbor, me sitting in the left seat. But we can´t land, swap seats and then do a training flight. Makes sense. But well, at least I can fly, unlike in other countries.
Unlike most here, I already flew dual during the pandemic. I wore an FFP2 mask, the instructor one of these self-made ones. No other precautions.
Flying with a mask was uncomfortable but I quickly got used to it. Then again, I’m used to wearing these day in day out…
Ultimately, one has to accept a non zero risk of infection during dual flying these times, everything else is unrealistic.
@MEdEwok thank you for the post, might you have more details on what precautions the commercial FTOs are using?
Is your mask of the valve variety, I can imagine an FFP2 mask might get quite ripe without a valve.
In Poland the current regulation is that passenger traffic with aircraft up to 15 seats is allowed. We’re a GA-only country :-) I did 9h dual in April for MEIR+exam, as our ATOs didn’t have any pause. There are temperature checks entering the airport and we must wear masks. We don’t wear them in the aircraft though. I doubt it’s of any use because of the small space and distance between pilots.
