(PENSIVE MUSIC)
I've been flying for 37 years. 17,000 hours.
I had 11 years in the air force, where we regularly,
because of the three-dimensional manoeuvres we were doing
in and out of cloud,
we were regularly getting ourselves disoriented.
So we were used to the conflict
of the vestibular system and the instruments.
And that was common-day stuff for us.
All the training, all the hours and experience I had,
didn't help me one iota
when it came to sitting in the Barany chair.
The sensation of rolling and tumbling in that chair was real.
And there is no experience, nothing you can do,
no course you can do to take away that rolling sensation.
You just have to understand it exists,
live with it and respond to it,
which means you follow the instruments.
OK, the Barany chair managed to fool Richard's brain
'cause he didn't have any visual stimulus
to allow him to orientate,
and 80% of our orientation is via our vision.
So then the body had to rely on the position of the hair cells
within the cochlea and the semicircle canals.
So when we first started moving Richard,
he was going at less than 2 degrees per second,
so therefore the fluid inside his ears was not shifting.
So therefore the hair cells inside the ear didn't shift either.
So he felt like he was stable and he wasn't moving.
Then, once we sped it up, it got greater than 2 degrees per second,
and the fluid shifts inside the ear,
and that makes the hair cells move in the direction that he was moving,
so he indicated that with his thumbs.
But after a while, if the speed stays constant,
then the fluid will settle
and the hair cells will come back up to upright,
so therefore he felt like he wasn't moving anymore,
and that's when he moved his thumbs up
to say he didn't feel he was moving.
Then when he was stopped suddenly,
there is a fast deceleration of the fluid,
and so therefore it moves much more dramatically,
and it shifted the hair cells
in the direction that it was moving
because of the stop,
so he therefore indicated that he was going the other way,
when he was actually stopped,
because that's what his ears were feeling -
they felt that they were moving
because the hair cells were moving
because the fluid had been forced to move because of the sudden stop.
For pilots, when they're flying,
when that happens, often the way to work out
whether they're actually moving or not is to check their instruments
and to see whether the altimeter has changed,
whether the speed has changed.
And they need to believe the instruments
over what their ears are telling them.
And I'm starting to think I'm not turning.
Keep going a bit longer.
Alright. I don't think I'm turning now.
OK. Head up. Open your eyes.
-You OK? -Yeah. (LAUGHS)
My head is rolling... My body thinks I'm rolling this way.
And all the senses from vision says that I'm sitting still,
does not match with my vestibular system.
They're just totally out of whack. Now it's coming back.
So my eyesight's overpowering the vestibular.
And now I've got it back.
But there was a sense of disbelief.
If I had not had the visual senses,
and I'd lifted my head up the way I just did,
I would have easily rolled the aircraft inverted
to keep what I thought was the normal attitude.
Things pilots can do to minimise getting spatially disorientated
is A, be aware of it and believe that it can happen to you.
No matter how experienced or unexperienced you are,
it will happen to everybody.
The other thing that you need to do pre-flight
is to make sure you know what the conditions are
and that you're capable of flying in those conditions.
So if you think there's going to be cloud
or you might be flying into dusk or dawn,
and you're not instrument rated, you shouldn't fly in that
or if the weather starts to get bad, you should land.
You should turn around. You shouldn't try and push on.
If you are instrument rated but you haven't flown for a while
or kept your currency up...
Just because you have a stamp that says you passed six months ago
but you haven't practised it in six months, you will have got rusty,
so you will not be performing as well as you would have done.
Other things to be aware of is that you are more likely
to become spatially disorientated
if you have alcohol on board,
because that thins the fluid down in your ears
so it will become much more sensitive to the movement.
It will also hang around
up to 32-48 hours after your last drink,
so it takes a while for the fluid to thicken back up again.
Also, if you're hungover, apart from the fluid,
you also won't be performing as well.
If you're hypoglycaemic, so there's low blood sugar,
then you are much more likely to become disorientated.
So you need to make sure you've eaten
six hours before you fly at the maximum.
Also, if you have taken medication,
some medications will also make you more prone to dizziness
or make that your blood pressure can't respond.
So you need to check what the side effect of the medications are.
Has your DAME cleared you to fly with those medications?
Also, medications that you can't get over the counter
or if you're taking illicit drugs,
all of those will make you more inclined to spatial disorientation.
And if you're psychologically stressed -
if you are still thinking about that argument you had with your partner
before you left the house,
then you're not going to be able to recognise
you're becoming disorientated quickly enough
or be able to problem-solve as easily as you normally would do
so you're much more likely to move into the type 3
or the unrecognised.