William Payne Stewart was born on 30 January, 1957 in United States of America, and he was an American professional golfer. He won eleven PGA Tour events, due to three major championship victories in his career; he was a popular golfer with huge support and following. William Payne Stewart was reputed to have the biggest wardrobe of all professional golfers and he was very popular in public because of his stylish golf swings of the modern era. Stewart represented the United State America in five Ryder Cup teams; he also played for U.S in three World Cup teams. William Payne Stewart won his first major title in 1989, PGA championships, and then won the title of U.S open against Scott Simpson in 1991. In 1999 he captured his third major title after holing a 15-foot (5m) par putt on the final hole for a one stroke victory. Payne Stewart was also a musician who played harmonica in a band and the band released one album, “I love to play” in 1998.
On 25 0ctober 1999, he was travelling from Florida to Texas in a plane which was climbing to its assigned altitude on autopilot. The flight lost the cabin pressure, causing expiration of all on board, due to hypoxia. The probable cause of this accident was lack of the oxygen in flight and the flight members did not receive supplemental oxygen in timely manner (CNN, 1999). As a result their failure to revive supplemental oxygen became the reason of their death.
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Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or any part of body limits oxygen supply at the tissue level. Generalized hypoxia occurs in healthy people when they ascend to higher altitudes, where it causes altitude sickness leading to potentially fatal complications of the likes of high altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. Altitude sickness is the group of general symptoms that are brought on by climbing or walking to a higher altitude, too quickly. It happens because the body does not have enough time to adapt to the lower air pressure and lower oxygen in the air at high altitudes. Hypoxia can result from a failure, at any stage, in the delivery of oxygen to cells. It can include decreased partial pressures of oxygen, problems with diffusion of oxygen in the lungs, and low available hemoglobin. It creates problem in blood flow, damaging the tissues, leading to difficulty in breathing.
The 42 years old captain, Michael King was an experienced pilot, possessing Airline transport pilot certificate along with air force experience flying the KC-135 and Boeing E-3 Sentry. He was also an instructor pilot on the KC-135E in the Marine National Guard. The other captain, 27, was also an experienced pilot and certified flight instructor. This incident happened because of lack of oxygen in the plane and resulted in the failure to revive supplemental oxygen for flight crew members. The plane was on the autopilot; all crew members and pilot were dead while the plane was still climbing. The jet continued to head northwest for more than four hours until apparently running out of fuel and crashed (Smith, 2009).
Altitude physiology confirms that higher altitudes do have in negligible effects on humans. It is the study of short-term change that occurs upon exposure to hypobaric hypoxia, which starts around 5000ft. It deals with the physiological challenge associated with exposure to environmental hypoxia at high altitude, along with adaptive and altitude sickness. We should understand the physiological effects on high altitude.
Conclusion
In final report of NSTB, the National Transport Safety Board said the airplane was not equipped with a flight data recorder, an invaluable tool in most major investigation, and it had only 30-minutes of voice recorded in the cockpit. It only tells about the last radio contact of the pilots with the radio tower, 25 minutes after takeoff. At that time, the plane was climbing through 37,000 feet. The probable cause of this plane crash was the loss of consciousness of two pilots because of loss in cabin pressure and failure to get emergency oxygen. This became the reason of their death. William Payne Stewart’s plane crashed on Oct 25, 1999, near Aberdeen, S.D. taking lives of all the people aboard.
References
CNN. (1999, November 23). New Evidence:Payne Stewart’s plane lost Pressure before crash. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/US/9911/23/stewart.crash.03/
Smith, Ray. (2009, September 2). NTSB Board presentation . Retrieved from Ntsb.gov
