If i have a choice at the end of my life, hypoxia is the way i want to go. Painless, in a state of euphoria.

Amazing - pilot seemed to come out of it so quickly and got clear over the span of a minute or two. Beer bar, wine bar, cigar bar, air bar, oxygen bar... hmmm.... BRB

Oh man, that sounds exactly like when I get hit with hypoglycemia. I wonder if it's a similar effect on the brain.

Wow, that's scary.

Don't pilots have oxygen masks to strap on in case of just such an emergency?

Very happy it ended peacefully.

Typically yes, especially in a Lear, but you need the presence of mind to hook it up. He was barely holding on to consciousness as it was.

Right, but that's obviously once he's well into it. I'm curious about how it starts and gets to that point.

Without any education on the subject, what I imagine is the cabin starts losing pressure, an alarm goes off, there's still enough oxygen in the pilot's blood/brain to reach for oxygen, etc.

Did the cabin lose pressure slowly without the pilot knowing about it or was he overcome so quickly he didn't have time to react or what else might have happened?

From perusing pilot's forums, it was probably a slow decompression. There is an article on the award given to the controllers which says:

Neither NTSB nor FAA databases contain the incident.