On the heels of the suspected decompression and hypoxia-related TBM900 crash that took the life of Larry Glazer, the president of the TBM Owners and Pilots Association, and his wife Jane Glazer, a non-pilot physician asked if there are onboard systems that monitor the health of a pilot’s body during flight. That got me thinking. With all of the available avionics integration, why not include body health monitoring in the interface? You know, important stuff like blood pressure, heart rate, pulse and of course oxygen saturation levels.
That’s partially what the Guardian Avionics Aero455 panel-mounted pulse oximeter system does. But the device isn’t a full-time, set-it-and-forget-it monitor. In other words, you have to voluntarily stick a finger in the thing to get a reading. That simple task could be too much for even a mildly hypoxic pilot to remember. A review of the Guardian integrated pulse oximeter/CO level system follows on page 20 of this issue.