It was my second consecutive day of flying with Captain Sow. We were scheduled for two sorties to Gumusut Kakap. He was a senior captain and could sign for the aircraft but yet command from the left hand seat. So, even though I was supposed to fly as a copilot clocking First Pilot hours, he made me sit on the right for both sorties. A bit of early morning confusion as I had already strapped into the left hand seat. However, I could understand that he may have wanted to have more of a chill day and allow the right hand seat pilot face the landings as the prevailing winds for the day favoured the right hand seat pilot at Gumusut.
I remember that when I was cutting my teeth as an offshore copilot in Kerteh, my senior captain in the company I served under at the time tested me on what I would do if the other pilot was incapacitated. We in the industry call it Pilot Incap. The cause could be food poisoning, loss of consciousness, cardiac arrest or narcolepsy for all we know. Verbal diarrhea is not included. That is a captain's perpetual ailment as far as copilots are concerned.
Having had some background in flying at the time as an ex Nuri pilot, I gave the senior captain the usual academic verbiage. Well, I would observe the pilot's responses to my advise, or his deviations from procedures or stabilisations in flight. Once sure he was incpacitated, I would verbally challenge him twice. If his being frozen in time and space persisted, I would take over control, secure his limbs away from flying controls, have him strapped firmly and immovably in his seat and get the old bird home. You know....that old nutshell.
Pilot Incap is a favourite Line Check question and it repeats during the License checks and operator's Checks, the periodic exams which determine that we are competent to hold a license with which we earn our keep.
Why on earth is it relevant here? Because from clock-in, Captain Sow had been coughing and sneezing quite worrisomely. That on its own was not alarming, as he wore his N95 and as did I, albeit of a different manufacturer. I had also taken my second booster shot, so Covid was not my first source of fear.
However, in flight, signs of his aforementioned training narrative were interrupted by coughs and sneezes taking a back seat to what I perceived as pauses to swallow down before he constructed his next sentence.
"Are you having a mint, sir?" I asked.
"Why, you want one, ah?" he offered.
"Thank you sir, but I can't. Sugar sir. Sugar!" I replied in jest, and also in attempted disguise of my concerns. Should he suddenly have a sharp intake of breath to shoot out a sneeze, I feared for where that mint might lodge.
My Pilot Incap training did not ever include reaching over to the left hand seat to perform the Heimlich.
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