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From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
Altered States
Flying the all-nighter—without reverting into a Neanderthal
The airplane doesn’t know if it’s nighttime or if the weather is bad.
Fa·tigue. fuh-teeg - noun Extreme tiredness, typically resulting from mental or physical exertion, sleep deprivation or illness. Known to cause irritability, poor judgment and blabbering like a caveman.
The first time I flew while tired (the word fatigue wasn’t in fashion then) was as a teen flying a Cherokee 140 from Kalamazoo, all-night to Billings, MT. Having survived unscathed, later that summer, I flew another all-nighter to New Bedford, MA, and then several to Denver — that would be Denver Stapleton when it still existed. My fatigue exposure in the military also came while flying long dis- tances after midnight: Nellis AFB, NV to central Florida in a practice run for the 1986 Libya bombing, Vegas to Italy for a NATO exercise (see “Passing Gas,” T &T Janu- ary 2011) and another to deliver four, factory-new F-16’s from the General Dynamics factory in Texas to Greece. While young and bulletproof then, this retired airline and newbie Citation captain is no longer knobby-kneed nor Kevlar coated. With COVID (kinda) in the rear-view mirror, all manner of travel has resumed, and long days and nights of flying lie ahead.
22 • TWIN & TURBINE / June 2023