I've been a private pilot since 2010 but it was a real struggle getting there due to motion sickness and fear of heights. I know... sounds crazy that anyone with these two problems would pursue flying but I've wanted to fly since I was a child. I started with dramamine but that made me drowsy and then I used a wristband with electronic pulses. That helped and eventually I didn't use anything. With more time in the air the symptoms got better but I still had to be careful under the hood or doing steep turns.

I also get motions sickness from riding in a car. I'm ok driving, and I'm ok flying as long as I'm in control.

I've had my ears checked by a specialist and he found no problems except some hearing loss from noisy machinery.

Is there anything I can practice on the ground to make my time in the air more enjoyable ? My wife is also a pilot and I'd really like to be able to be a passenger with her as PIC.

In my experience, the two conditions you describe (fear of heights and motion sickness) are not uncommon in the pilot community. Fear of heights seems to be particularly common in pilots.

Your experience with motion sickness mirrors what I've seen, that is no motion sickness when you are flying but there is when you're a passenger. Unfortunately, other than telling you you're in good company, I can't offer much help. At one point, we had a very experienced check airman who wore wrist bands while giving check rides. He said he could fly all day without, but with someone else flying, he'd often get sick.

Flying while taking any of the motion sickness medications, including the patch, is a really bad idea, and contrary to aeromedical regulations.....don't go there if you're going to be PIC.

I'd try to find a specialist who may be able to offer some ideas.

Good luck.

MTV

This stuff is very popular among scuba divers, and works very well.

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/di ... nnarizine/

Unfortunately it is not available in the US, but it is legal to import for your own use, you can buy it on line from Canada, or pick it up over the counter in Mexico. It was originally developed by the British military after the Falkland's war.

My experience with students leads me to believe higher than 1g load factor in turns initiates the problem and once initiated it cannot be cured or even mitigated that flight.

In a former thread with MTV and others about how energy management turns might aggravate the problem, I came to the conclusion that just the opposite was more accurate. Thinking back over the hundreds of pilots I had taught this turn technique,and the many pipeline employees and students who flew with me making thousands of energy management turns per run, I realized that far fewer got sick than normal maneuver students.

Sounds crazy but you and your wife might try mild energy management turns to target rather than load factor producing level turns to heading in contact flying. Just looking outside rather than at the gauges seems to help. 1g rather than more than 1g in turns helps, I think.

I too am afraid of heights. But I have flown low all my life. A hundred feet exposure, on a rock climb, is plenty enough to kill you. But a thousand feet exposure, a place I have never been, sure is scarier. Even with the tourists watching, I crawl up to the edge to look down into the Grand Canyon.

The only proven solution is desensitisation. Fly with your wife as PIC, and do it often. Start with short flights on nice days and work your way up in duration and poorer conditions, head for landing as soon as you start feeling symptoms coming on. If you actually vomit you lose ground in the desensitisation process, so land ASAP when you start feeling ill.

The Royal Canadian Airforce uses this device to cure motion sickness:



http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/article-template-standard.page?doc=one-of-a-kind-machine/i5xz1598

People who've done it will tell you that it's a thoroughly unpleasant, but effective process. Mythbusters built something similar for an episode on motion sickness. Perhaps slowly spinning in an office chair would be a low cost approximation.

Learn to fly from the right seat. Won't do anything for your motion sickness, but your wife can fly left seat and you can take control when you start feeling ill.

Although not for motion sickness, I started flying right seat when my wife started flying, and now I fly right seat all the time. The only time I go over to the left seat is for IFR, since all the instruments are on the left side... I can fly IFR from the right seat, but it's a lot more work and I only do it with my wife in the left seat, ready to take over.

We'll swap control of the aircraft a half dozen times during a cross country flight without even thinking about it. You might find that just putting your hand on the yoke while she flies will keep you from getting sick.

If you haven't flown right seat before, you might take an instructor the first time or two. There's an amazing amount of muscle-memory involved in flying, and swapping the throttle and yoke hands was surprisingly difficult for me at first.

good luck

Search goggle for Barany chair, it's what the US Air Force uses to help pilot trainees overcome their motion sickness. Not all people can be 'cured' but it does help a great many. Watching someone being 'spun can be quite entertaining....as long as you aren't next in line! LMAO!!

I've talked to a number of competition aerobatic pilots about this very subject and quite a few tell me they get airsick at the beginning of each season as they start practicing but that it goes away as their body adjusts to the feelings (I couldn't spell the word acclimate otherwise I would have used it).

Might be worth talking to an acupuncturist and see if there is anything they can do.

On the fear of heights thing - fly close to the ground (sorry couldn't resist).

I am curious if one has never gotten air/sea/car sick whether it's safe to say that it is likely to then suddenly occur unexpectedly out of the blue?

I have had friends discover they are now diabetic, or have begun to be allergic to strawberries, etc. In other words, something happened and the person is now vulnerable. I 'd hate to be solo one day and get disoriented, or deeply nauseous all of a sudden. Just curious.

Interesting thread here on how to get over motion sickness, including possible acute and unexpected onset.

Denali wrote:I am curious if one has never gotten air/sea/car sick whether it's safe to say that it is likely to then suddenly occur unexpectedly out of the blue?

I had my first bout of seasickness about a month ago, after thousands of hours on the water. I used the 'touch a tree' cure, but not until after five more hours of fishing.

I wasn't driving, I was jet-lagged with a belly full of black coffee and my guts had been ransacked by months of antibiotics. Any one of those reasons might be the problem, but I do believe it can just happen.

Come to think of it, I was getting a bit queasy in the back of a 206 doing SAR practise last summer. Maybe I am prone more than I thought.

Allan

Denali,

Hand flying Hueys (no auto pilot ) for an hour IMC was tiring enough to start vertigo in most pilots. No problem if necessary to grit it out. If you didn't let the other pilot take over, however, sickness would result. Worked out well because we only had 2.5 hours of fuel.

Flying Hueys in Missouri ARNG only four years resulted in over 300 actual instrument hours.

OP,

As others have said, sharing can help.

Denali,

I have to ask. What will happen to the the john when they open their chutes?

Contact

My wife swears by Sea-Band Wristbands.

I cannot personally attest to them other than observing that before the bands the sick sacks were in great demand in the right seat, now not so much unless there is bad turbulence.

We had a pilot at work that was having trouble with airsickness. He adjusted his caffeine, coffee, intake prior to flying and that helped, but it didn't cure it 100%. He then talked to an ENT who found that he had a slight imbalance of fluid within the inner ear. They were able to treat this and he has not been sick since. He says he feels better than ever. The doctor also indicated that his sinuses would be better off as wel. Don't ask me why as I have no clue, but it has worked wonders for him.

Red Sled, I know exactly what you're talking about....that's me to a "T"!! I can get sick watching cars go by at a stop light....or a video that someone takes that's shaky...I'm outta there!! That's one of the main reasons I became a mechanic 30+ years ago instead of pursuing the pilot end of things. I'm interested in all this thread... I'm gonna try a few things too. I've got a really good accupuncturist that has totally turned me around with my sinus problems, so I'm going to go talk to her about it. My Mom had a few bouts of vertigo a year or so ago, and she found a physical therapist that got her back on her feet almost instantly...maybe that's an avenue to pursue? Just looking at those chairs above makes me queezy......hahaha
John

Thank you everyone for your comments and suggestions. Great ideas and I will look into all of them.

hardtailjohn ; yes.. I forgot that I can get sick watching cars go by . It's just crazy.

Contrary to my username, I've left the farm and am a lineman working on high voltage transmission line. Heights don't bother me.

I use to have problems with air sickness while being passenger in a helicopter doing low level powerline patrol, usually flying 50'-80' AGL for 3 to 7 hours a day. I've found that I have two main factors affecting wether my stomach will be happy with me or not that day:

1. Keep looking outside! I've heard this one is true wether in a plane, boat or vehicle. Your brain needs to see the horizon, and compare what you see outside with what you feel in your butt. Part of my patrols involve inputting data into a table, I've made it a habit to never look down for more than 5 seconds at a time, with short intervals to look out at the horizon. Same goes for texting.

5. Make sure you're well rested. This one took me longer to figure out. With only 4-5 hours of sleep the night before, I was almost guaranteed to feel some motion sickness that day. Now that I make sure I get the recommended 7-8 hours the night before, I've almost reduced motion sickness to non-existent.

Fly more. I used to get airsick just getting close to a plane. I still get seasick. But after learning to fly (took a while) I have never been airsick since, even as a passenger. Had a friend who was even worse, he still got sick after learning to fly, but the more he flew the less times he got sick. Now it doesn't bother him at all.

I would stay away from the store-bought sea-sick aids. Dramamine makes you drowsy. I once used the patch while working on a boat, it worked for the sickness but I lost my near vision and sense of balance for a week!

You said you've used the Relief Band with some success--try turning it up a notch if you start feeling a little queasy. That's what works for my SO, who can hardly look at a boat without getting seasick otherwise. On one particularly rough segment of a charter, I saw her turning it up from its normal low adjustment, asked her how she was doing, and she said, "Great! This is fun!" just as a huge wave came over the bow and whacked the windshield of the Nordic Tug. "Still OK?" "Yup, GREAT!"

I second the idea of definitely looking outside vs. inside. Your wife may be a real looker, but don't look at her while she's doing the flying--look only outside, and out the windshield, not the side windows.

I also have a fear of heights, but I've only had 2 bouts with motion sickness in my entire flying life, and neither boating nor riding in cars bothers me in the slightest. The first queasy was when I was working on my commercial doing 8s on pylons, as my instructor had me gradually use closer and closer pylons until it was necessary to go from a hard bank left to a hard bank right without any level transition. The second was when I took aerobatic lessons, after a series of loops, rolls, and half a dozen spins. Neither time did I get sick sick, just a little green, and it went away as soon as I'd been straight and level for a short time.

One of my early students was palmed off on me, because his first instructor got fed up with how quickly the student would get sick, as little as 10 minutes. We worked on it by doing tougher and tougher things, stretching the lessons gradually from 10-15 minutes to the more traditional hour. One of the things I did after several lessons was to take all the sick sacks out of the airplane, and I told him that if he got sick, he had to clean the airplane. Right after that was his first hood lesson, and within seconds under the hood, he suddenly threw off the hood and slid back his seat, intending to barf on the floor. I hollered at him, "NO, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET SICK--PERIOD!" Surprisingly, he didn't, and that was the last time he got queasy. As I've learned, a goodly amount of motion sickness isn't really motion sickness at all, but psychological--fear, something different, whatever.

An aside: he ended up being a pretty good stick and rudder pilot, and he had the most phenomenal ability to read a chart and determine his location.

Cary

For seven summers I worked part time on the ocean in Alaska...crew and operator. I'd get sick then better in a couple of days. Did stagger a bit after stepping off the ship after acclimated like apparently all sailors.

I've gotten sick flying surveys in the back of a plane, but acclimated after a couple of days. No way to avoid looking down and back.

Never have gotten sick doing the flying but have felt queasy as a front seat passenger after not being airborne for some time.

The caution I see is that if someone does get sick or queasy that they maintain "see and avoid" and that includes the side windows. Might be hard to maintain vigilance but it's important.

Gary

I agree with many of the previously mentioned suggestions. Smells triggered the queasiness with me as a kid. My dad would drain the sumps on the Lark Commander he had and one whiff of avgas would get me on the way, before we even took off. Dramamine was a requirement for me to fly as a kid, which essentially just put me to sleep for the trip.

When I learned to fly I was limited to 30-45 minutes depending on the day and the maneuvers before I'd have to park it. As mentioned, once you feel queasy you can't recover and fly again that day. Eventually I'd overcome it, but it took time and wasn't gone permanently. A few years later I picked up a college roommate at Westover to fly up to Maine for the weekend. The tower forgot about the little Musketeer at the hold short line for 30 minutes while C-130's did touch and go's in the patten. By the time we left we had eaten the egg salad sandwiches in the 80 degree heat. There's a much longer story, but I was sick all the way to Maine, had constant dry heaves the next day flying from Lewiston-Auburn to Augusta, and then more heaving on the way home to Middlebury on day 3. Without recovery time there was no getting past it.

- fly lots to build up a tolerance, without going too far
- look outside all the time.
- 1G positive loads only. Silky smooth flying wins the race in all respects.
- plan so you can have body recovery time before the next flight.
- eat a snack of saltines before going flying. I believe this makes a difference. It helped me to also fly on a more empty stomach and not. Small sips of water to choke down the dry saltines was good too, but limited intake.

And remember, Bob Hoover had this problem bad. And look what some persistence did for him.