Has Southwest Airlines banned aspartame from the cockpit?

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 00:33:01 GMT, r5
wrote:

Deirdre Saoirse Moen wrote:
I was hospitalized three times, suffering from near-drowning in my own
saliva, before I put two and two together and realized that it was

And you are 1 data point out of 100,000,000 or so, and you
haven't really documented beyond doubt that it was the
aspartame. This is hardly a reason to ban such a benign

Ask most any GP and they'll tell you there are quite a few people who
react to aspartame, but OTOH I don't think it's a very large percent.

substance from airline cockpits. After all, if aspartame
were such a danger, automobile crash rates would reflect
this problem,

Not unless they were looking for it. It's normally one of those
things they'd never see unless they were looking for it specifically.
Driver got sick, lost control. Only if a regular pattern turned up
would they look for it.

It's a given that some percentage of accidents are ... well... not
accidents, but they are the most difficult of all to prove.

and I'm willing to bet there is **NOT*** a
single case supporting this.

Add one more, although most who are affected by it become readily
aware of it so I see no need to ban it as long as any thing containing
it is labeled. All foods and beverages containing it are so required.
The only thing I really have to worry about are prepared deserts. If
they don't know, I don't eat it. If it has a label that doesn't list
sugar I don't eat it, but I recently purchased one of those pies that
are prepared, but not baked. Sugar was on the label. My wife baked
it, I ate it and two hours later... At any rate I dug the labeled out
of the trash and although it listed sugar in the ingredients, it also
listed aspartame down near the bottom. Now I read the whole label.

Peanuts I can eat. Soybean products do not bother me, but if I drank
or ate something containing Aspartame on a flight, it would get
diverted unless we were close to the destination although it affects
me differently and I do get a warning.

When I'm doing the flying I make certain I do not eat or drink
anything containing the stuff at least two hours prior to flying and
during the flight. Of course I avoid the stuff like the plague
anyway, but I believe the figure is something like 1 out of 100,000
has some kind of reaction to it. There are those on here who should
know the correct figure. That is not to say all have the same
symptoms, or severity. Like any allergy or drug reaction, different
people seem to react differently. For me it's like a very bad case of
flu. Painful, but without the nausea.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com