Airbus wrote:
In article ,
says...

On Nov 15, 7:05 pm, Airbus wrote:
A bit O.T. :
I read an accident report a few years back - an FBO in Europe re-filled an
O2 bottle with compressed air. In the ensuing high-altitude flight, the
pilot lost conciousness and the airplane crashed in the mountains. A
passenger, miraculously, survived and confirmed the cause of the crash due
to the pilot's unconciousness.

What I've wondered ever since I read it :
What would the FBO be doing with compressed air in the first place, and how
could this confusion occur? What *could* they have been thinking?
They use compressed air to drive all their tools in the shop.



Sure - but to get air from their shop compressor into an O2 bottle would
require some real ingenuity. Anyone smart enough to do that would be smart
enough not to do it, I should think!

I'm wondering - maybe the FBO didn't have O2 facilities, and some gopher went
out to a local diving supplies shop, and together they managed to jury-rig the
fittings . . .

Not to mention getting the 125 psi
shop air up to about 2500 psi to fill
the bottle...

It is puzzling. In the US, about the
only thing bottled air is used for is
firefighters' air bottles, scuba diving
bottles and breathing air for working
in hazardous atmospheres. I'd suspect
one of these three sources.