KAREN WALKER / DALLAS
Fatigue study data will improve crew management and enhance shift systems
Air New Zealand (ANZ) has developed a fatigue-monitoring programme which could have wide-ranging implications for the way airlines manage aircrew rosters on long-haul schedules.
The airline has been gathering data from its pilots via questionnaires, sleep diaries and a Palm Pilot that measures a person's fatigue level through response time to tasks. Validated against fatigue studies conducted by NASA and other organisations, ANZ hopes this data can be used to identify flight schedules where fatigue is an issue, and develop better crew roster systems to combat the problem.
Speaking at the World Airline Training Conference in Dallas, Texas, Keith Petrie, manager of ANZ's fatigue management programme, said there was an industry-wide lack of information on the issue. This is mainly because fatigue and crew roster issues tend to be closely tied to labour bargaining. ANZ has overcome the hurdle by working with unions, using only volunteer pilots for its studies, not using management pilots, and making the study data-driven.
Study pilots take about 8min each to complete their questionnaires and Palm Pilot reaction-time tasks, four times during a typical duty cycle - pre-flight, post-flight and twice during cruise.
Of special interest have been ultra-long-haul flights, night flights, flights that cross several time zones and short "tag" flights that come at the end of a long-haul flight. The study has also examined whether one- or two-night crew rests in distant destination cities, such as London, affect a pilot's fatigue levels.
"Roster shift systems should become much smarter with this sort of information," says Petrie. "Airbus and Boeing are looking at ultra- long-range aircraft, so we need to find out how to manage fatigue on flights of 18h."
Source: Flight International