Any pilot's awake up there??

[shotgunfacelift]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-220511...

Does anyone find this report worrying or just an exaggeration of the situation?

My stance would be that the pilots would be very reluctant to sleep of they thought that they were in danger themselves (as well as the passengers of course!)

[Munter]

The same as drivers of cars. If they are in a comfy seat and not much interesting is happening, and they have been awake for a long time. Then sometimes their mind will wander and before they know it they zzzzzzz.

[Kempus]

Seats aren't that comfortable on what I fly! It's boredom and silly o'clock departures!

[anonymous-user]

Slow news day?
As long as they're not both asleep what's the problem. Rather they took a cat nap mid-cruise and be alert for the approach than try to stay awake for 13 hours then fk it up on finals due to fatigue.

[5150]

It's a serious issue that, until recently, has gone unreported.

To cut a long story short, airlines are working their crews harder than ever. Minimum legal rest between long duty days, airlines seeing legal maximum as a target, not a limit, are just the tip of the iceberg. Coupled with contract crews who regularly turn up to work tired or ill, or both, out of fear of not getting permanent contracts, the industry is in disarray.

Add to this, proposed changes to industry flight time limitations - there's every chance that next time you step on a plane to go on holiday, one of the crew members will be suffering from some form of fatigue (chronic in some cases) - I'd urge people to read and sign(!) the petition below . . .

http://list.flightdutytimes.eu/Participate.4.0.htm...

[anonymous-user]

It'll take a lot more than a petition to change anything.
Have attended many a seminar on crew rest and sleep discipline over 24 years of military aviation, a colleague of mine summed it up quite nicely to the over-enthusiastic Americian lecturing us about how we should "go and bang on your boss's desk and tell him you had a near miss because you were tired".
Put simply, he said "Until we crash, no one will listen, let alone actually care"

[IforB]

It's a serious issue. I have fallen asleep whilst flying, usually as part of an approved "napping" system, but on a few occassions I've woken up and found the bloke next to me "checking the overhead panel" too...

The new rules help to ensure that this becomes a bigger issue not a smaller one.

[simonej]

Hmmm, try flying 'privately' for the owner of an aircraft! Airline pilots wouldn't know what hit them. 27 hours duty? No problem, Sir. When you're seeing four whites, four reds, there's a problem!

Seriously though, how on earth do you fall asleep when departing or approaching? I've worked some seriously long duties and whilst sleeping in the cruise is easy enough, falling asleep during a high workload descent and arrival into London airspace must be nigh on impossible.

[shotgunfacelift]

I'll take the car in future then!

But on a serious note, I fear this will never get addressed until an A380 drops into Buckingham Palace. Did this used to happen so much when aircraft used to have the flight engineer aboard? As I presume they would have had one sleeping and two awake back then, helping to cut down on the 2nd pilot falling asleep etc...

[XB70]

I thought I read somewhere that if there is no activity for an extended period of time (so no adjustments, review of any screens, movement of throttle or control quadrant etc) that some sort of alarm goes off to force a reaction (ie, wake up!)

[khaosai]

Hi,

That's right, on some aircraft you get a reminder after a pre determined time has passed and there has been no switch action in the flight deck. First off you get an advisory message, which then changes to a caution then a full warning after a few minutes have passed.

[IforB]

simonej said:

Hmmm, try flying 'privately' for the owner of an aircraft! Airline pilots wouldn't know what hit them. 27 hours duty? No problem, Sir. When you're seeing four whites, four reds, there's a problem!

Seriously though, how on earth do you fall asleep when departing or approaching? I've worked some seriously long duties and whilst sleeping in the cruise is easy enough, falling asleep during a high workload descent and arrival into London airspace must be nigh on impossible.

You're missing the real issue here. The problem isn't the occasional long duty. I've done some 30+ hr duties, but much of those would be positioning back.

The major problem is the relentless grind and the cumulative problems of fatigue. That is what really gets you. You just don't get a chance to recover and the breakup of sleep patterns means that even when you are scheduled enough rest, it's irrelelevant as you can't just shut down like a machine.

There will be an incident or something worse caused by this one day and the sad thing is that the industry is now accepting that making changes that result in reduced safety standards for no reason other than cost savings is acceptable. Whilst the airline industry in Europe is hugely safe and has very few incidents, it's almost as if people have become a bit blase about safety and assume that everything is going to be fine at times.

I see it in management meetings regularly, but fortunately I work for a company where Flight Ops has enough power to simply say "stop being so stupid" however, there are other companies I worked for where that isn't the case in the same way.

[hairyben]

Crossflow Kid said:

It'll take a lot more than a petition to change anything.
Have attended many a seminar on crew rest and sleep discipline over 24 years of military aviation, a colleague of mine summed it up quite nicely to the over-enthusiastic Americian lecturing us about how we should "go and bang on your boss's desk and tell him you had a near miss because you were tired".
Put simply, he said "Until we crash, no one will listen, let alone actually care"

Thats a universal though isn't it, its unfortunately why H&S has to exist, whether you wield a spade or a yoke for a living. Did think hairyplane driving was more forward thinking but it doesn't surprise me.

I know it's probably a hard sell, but wouldn't it make more sense for pilots to be actively engaged in something rather than passively flying the plane, evan if that mean a % of their attention was elsewhere? EG I generally listen to LBC (talk radio) when driving the van alone, I'm sure that having my brain mentally engaged in a debate is good for general alertness.

[Blackpuddin]

IforB said:

on a few occasions I've woken up and found the bloke next to me "checking the overhead panel" too...

ha ha very good

[anonymous-user]

hairyben said:

Crossflow Kid said:

It'll take a lot more than a petition to change anything.
Have attended many a seminar on crew rest and sleep discipline over 24 years of military aviation, a colleague of mine summed it up quite nicely to the over-enthusiastic Americian lecturing us about how we should "go and bang on your boss's desk and tell him you had a near miss because you were tired".
Put simply, he said "Until we crash, no one will listen, let alone actually care"

Thats a universal though isn't it, its unfortunately why H&S has to exist, whether you wield a spade or a yoke for a living. Did think hairyplane driving was more forward thinking but it doesn't surprise me.

I know it's probably a hard sell, but wouldn't it make more sense for pilots to be actively engaged in something rather than passively flying the plane, evan if that mean a % of their attention was elsewhere? EG I generally listen to LBC (talk radio) when driving the van alone, I'm sure that having my brain mentally engaged in a debate is good for general alertness.

I did once manage to tune the HF to the Spanish equivalent of Classic FM. Not bad considering we were transiting back from Belfast at the time.

[MarkwG]

Crossflow Kid said:

I know it's probably a hard sell, but wouldn't it make more sense for pilots to be actively engaged in something rather than passively flying the plane, even if that mean a % of their attention was elsewhere? EG I generally listen to LBC (talk radio) when driving the van alone, I'm sure that having my brain mentally engaged in a debate is good for general alertness.

that's an interesting idea, & has been discussed where I work, however it also introduces distractions from the task at hand, so it's a tricky balance.

[MarkwG]

A lex said:

A university did some research here at our ATC centre about 2yrs ago to study how alert/drowsy controllers were on night shifts - the busiest part of the shift is often at around 5-6am when you are seriously knackered.

The controllers who were given games, electronic devices, a TV to watch etc had much higher levels or alertness than the ones who towed the (official) line of looking at nothing other than the radar screen. They used all sorts of brain puzzles to collate the results.

Yep, that's what I recall, the difficulty is getting it passed the managers who only see it as "playing with games", sadly. Where I am, it's not the way the tide is flowing...

[Chainguy]

IforB said:

simonej said:

Hmmm, try flying 'privately' for the owner of an aircraft! Airline pilots wouldn't know what hit them. 27 hours duty? No problem, Sir. When you're seeing four whites, four reds, there's a problem!

Seriously though, how on earth do you fall asleep when departing or approaching? I've worked some seriously long duties and whilst sleeping in the cruise is easy enough, falling asleep during a high workload descent and arrival into London airspace must be nigh on impossible.

You're missing the real issue here. The problem isn't the occasional long duty. I've done some 30+ hr duties, but much of those would be positioning back.

The major problem is the relentless grind and the cumulative problems of fatigue. That is what really gets you. You just don't get a chance to recover and the breakup of sleep patterns means that even when you are scheduled enough rest, it's irrelelevant as you can't just shut down like a machine.

There will be an incident or something worse caused by this one day and the sad thing is that the industry is now accepting that making changes that result in reduced safety standards for no reason other than cost savings is acceptable. Whilst the airline industry in Europe is hugely safe and has very few incidents, it's almost as if people have become a bit blase about safety and assume that everything is going to be fine at times.

I see it in management meetings regularly, but fortunately I work for a company where Flight Ops has enough power to simply say "stop being so stupid" however, there are other companies I worked for where that isn't the case in the same way.

Fantastic post, nailed it IforB

BALPA has been asleep at the wheel (yes, I know, big groans) for so long on this and are only now just getting around to making a noise about it. Too little to late though by a long ways. Minimum crew rest is here to stay and some of the operators out there are kicking it to death. I have heard of at least two over-speeds and a level bust that have been blamed internally on dog tired flight crew, with early starts getting earlier during the on duty period being the culprit. As you get older, it catches up, and there is no wonder a lot of guys in there 40's are now really starting to feel it and are getting nervous about keeping the medical. Prolonged fatigue does some interesting things to the body.

Sadly though, as BALPA did sod all 15 years ago when 'pay to fly' got a grip and Pilots then became seen as a needless expense and not an asset (hence why we have flight crew in this country, flying for outfits joe public will have heard of, barely clearing a 4 figure per month salary) I can't see them having any better a track record on getting this looked at.