Fly Well: Something wicked this way comes

Meet Martyn Atterton, a fellow Brit and passionate, experienced, commercial, multiengine, instrument pilot. Like me, he started to fly in Britain, but vagaries of English weather took him to Florida to complete his training. Now living near Austin, Texas, he flies out of Georgetown Airport. On Thanksgiving night 2015, after a lovely meal prepared by his fiancée, Cyndi, Martyn started to experience some buffeting: sweaty, nauseated, dizzy, and sluggish. He considered himself fit for a 60-year-old, even though he weighed in at 245 pounds and his blood pressure was high. But reducing coffee intake for a few weeks before his visit to his designated medical examiner, Martyn could squeeze through his medical, so he must be fit, right?

As the nausea became more severe, he began to vomit, and called out for help. When he came to, he was surrounded by family—and paramedics. A nitroglycerine tablet under his tongue and an ECG recording told the story. His first thought was: “No way, do not say I have had a heart attack, they will stop me from flying!” But just as a stall warning declares impending doom, that was the diagnosis. After a trip to the hospital, Martyn became the proud owner of two coronary artery stents and proceeded to a smooth landing back home.

And then it hit him: Three days before his heart attack, Martyn flew a single-pilot mission at night with passengers. What would have happened if that attack had come earlier?

Now self-grounded, Martyn worked with his cardiologist and an experienced AME to flight plan his route back into the sky. Contemporaneously, Cyndi, a health coach and fitness consultant, studied techniques to get Martyn fit and to keep him that way. She personalized a cardiac rehabilitation plan that would help him recover from this stall in the shortest possible time frame. This included changing his diet, adding daily exercise, and instituting stress-reduction programs.

“We knew,” said Cyndi, “that he would have to take and pass a Bruce Protocol stress test on an inclined treadmill, so we trained him to do that, stepping up the difficulty as he got better; he lost 48 pounds; his heart function was great; and we worked with his cardiologist to get the tests done. We knew they would be needed to obtain that all-important special issuance medical certificate.”

Martyn calls this his “event” because he abhors the phrase heart attack. Three months later, everything was ready to send to the FAA and, a short while later, paperwork in hand, he was back in the left seat, “Five months in total from the, OK, from the heart attack.” In deference to Cyndi, he admits that the program she encouraged him to do was vital—and it reduced his blood pressure, leaving him feeling 20 years younger.

Cyndi told me that just as Martyn was passionate about aviation, she was committed to good health, and noting Martyn’s excess weight, she had tried to encourage him to exercise well before the event. She also commented that, as the hospital staff were attending to his critical condition, he was saying, “I have to fly. Tell them it’s only heartburn. I have to fly.” The paramedic who had transported Martyn said they often hear this from pilots.

Based on this experience, Cyndi and Martyn were motivated to try and help other pilots who might similarly be flying along through life, buffeted by imminent stalls, and ignoring the bleating horn and sloppy controls. We would not dream of doing that in an airplane, yet how many of you reading this could lose a few pounds, eat healthfully, quit smoking, check your blood pressure and lipids, and exercise regularly? The Atterton 12-week program is called Fit 2 Fly and it puts responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the PIC, where it belongs. Take a page from Martyn’s book: Denial may be a river in Egypt, but it is no way to manage your health.

Ray Bradbury’s dark 1962 novel featured a man who tricked fairgoers into hell-like servitude. It is taken from Act IV of Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Teaching skills and techniques to avoid this kind of stall is just as important as learning how to avoid the aerodynamic type.

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