Fatigue is finally making the news

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200hr Wonder
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Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by 200hr Wonder »

https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/canada/tr ... -1.4153915

Good work for everyone who keeps this gong. Keep the public informed and keep going. ALPA, ACPA, all the other lobby groups. We need better rules.
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Roadrunnersmother
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Roadrunnersmother »

But regulations already say if we are not fit for duty, Fatigue included, we do not accept the assignment.
Nothings going to change unless employees start using regulations already in place.
Why did the AC crew continue to SFO if fatigued ? Could have stopped enroute and rested.
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RILEY
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

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pianokeys
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by pianokeys »

You idiots, "DOCTOR" Ashley Nunes says were not tired, he says were just crappy. Duh. WAKE UP. LITERALLY.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Panama Jack »

Roadrunnersmother wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:48 pm But regulations already say if we are not fit for duty, Fatigue included, we do not accept the assignment.
Nothings going to change unless employees start using regulations already in place.
Why did the AC crew continue to SFO if fatigued ? Could have stopped enroute and rested.

One problem with fatigue is it cannot be clinically measured, unlike alcoholism or drugs, which can be measured by taking bodily fluid samples or breathalyzer tests. It would be wonderful if it could.

Tired pilots is just the way things have been done in the industry. As Sidney Dekker writes, "Into one ear the airlines lecture, 'never break regulations. Never take a chance. Never ignore written procedures. Never compromise on safety'. Yet in the other they whisper 'Don't cost us time. Don't waste our money. Get your passengers to their destination- don't find a reason why you can't."

I have seen this bullying in the industry- Pilots having called fatigue being investigated, being told that "it is legal and everyone else is able to do it, what is the problem?" followed by a referral to a doctor to see if there is medically something wrong with the pilot. Most pilots don't appreciate this kind of attention, and besides we are goal oriented and poor judges of our own levels of fatigue and impairment level.

That's why science-based flight duty schemes are such an imperative, and if only science could follow that up with a way to measure fatigue levels- it would go a long way to improving air safety.
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TheTurdBurglar
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by TheTurdBurglar »

The company I work for will deduct a full day's pay if you admit to be fatigued and refuse a flight assignment.
That certainly doesn't encourage me to decline a flight.
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Lightchop
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Lightchop »

Sucks to work for a shitty company.
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C.W.E.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by C.W.E. »

The company I work for will deduct a full day's pay if you admit to be fatigued and refuse a flight assignment.
That certainly doesn't encourage me to decline a flight.
Have you considered that by working for them you are enabling a culture that degrades flight safety?
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Panama Jack
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Panama Jack »

C.W.E. wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 10:47 pm
The company I work for will deduct a full day's pay if you admit to be fatigued and refuse a flight assignment.
That certainly doesn't encourage me to decline a flight.
Have you considered that by working for them you are enabling a culture that degrades flight safety?

Have you considered that this is an industry-wife, Global issue?

I read your statement to be trite and an oversimplification of the problem. Yes, it certainly is a pilot's duty to say "no" or "stop" if something is unsafe or blatantly illegal, however that really doesn't recognize the real pressures of people at the sharp end of the system and how the industry is working. While you have some excellent operations out there which mostly do a good job at complying with the rules and going above and beyond, a survey of the industry suggests that this is not necessarily so commonplace. Just ask a 703 pilot about the pressures they face.

Therein lies the role of the Authority to provide realistic and science-based regulations. Operators face cost and competition pressures and look for ways to get greater efficiencies out of their resources. They only limit themselves where the regulations tell them they must or they see that it makes economic sense (either very tangible cost-benefit analysis or risk assessment). That's the grey area, and where the need for black & white regulations and standards exist.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by navajo_jay »

Exactly, pilots are the worse to assess their fatigue level. We are so goal oriented and don't want to disappoint our passenger, boss, and firstly ourselves! I had to use the Fatigue call a few times, and every time I felt stupid, and telling myself maybe I wasn't that tired, oh I'm letting my company, my passengers, my colleagues, etc. But screw this now. After the SFO incident, I have no remorse calling in fatigue. That's the way the business is, and that's how the industry wants it, well suck it up!

I'm tired of waiting for the government to improve our working conditions. We have so many instruments to monitor, engine parameters, fuel, oil, pressures, etc but yet we don't have anything to asses our fatigue other than our judgment. And when we are tired, our judgement is not the greatest. Maybe one day we'll have an EICAS message when we are too tired lol!

FLy safe and book off fatigue when you can! Nobody is going to back you if you fly fatigued and you don't want your name all over the news!
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Zaibatsu »

navajo_jay wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:12 am Nobody is going to back you if you fly fatigued and you don't want your name all over the news!
And don’t you ever forget it. They are adept and playing the game and a skilled and manipulative operator will get what they want out of you and have their asses fully covered.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Meatservo »

Roadrunnersmother wrote: Mon Oct 29, 2018 2:48 pm Why did the AC crew continue to SFO if fatigued ? Could have stopped enroute and rested.
I would LOVE IT, and I mean I would literally be dancing with glee, if I saw on the news that an airliner made an unscheduled landing at some intermediate stop enroute to its destination because the flight-deck crew decided they could do with a kip before continuing to their destination.

I would actually caper if I saw this on the news. PLEASE, PLEASE, somebody do this, PLEASE.

I will let you live at my house and feed you until you find a new job. All I ask is that it be the crew of a scheduled mainline jet carrier. Not a Twin Otter crew, not a DC-3T crew, not even a Q-400 crew. But a mainline jet crew. Please, oh please do this.
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Donald
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Donald »

Things in Canada won't change until countries like the US ban us from entering their airspace.

Another SFO-type incident and maybe they will.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Boreas »

Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Monday he is eager to move ahead on new pilot-fatigue rules. Proposed new regulations will be released soon and a consultation period will follow, he said.
So... more stalling?

Haven't the new regs been proposed already? Isn't that what Gazette 1 was about?

Sure, Mr. Garneau, give operators more time to lobby against a solution. Canadian aviation duty regulations are an embarrassment, and so are you!
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by co-joe »

Panama Jack wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 2:31 am...
One problem with fatigue is it cannot be clinically measured, unlike alcoholism or drugs, which can be measured by taking bodily fluid samples or breathalyzer tests. It would be wonderful if it could.

...

Out of curiosity, how is BAE (blood alcohol equivalent) measured? There must be some way to measure the level of impairment as a result of fatigue.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Panama Jack »

co-joe wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:17 pm
Panama Jack wrote: Fri Nov 09, 2018 2:31 am...
One problem with fatigue is it cannot be clinically measured, unlike alcoholism or drugs, which can be measured by taking bodily fluid samples or breathalyzer tests. It would be wonderful if it could.

...

Out of curiosity, how is BAE (blood alcohol equivalent) measured? There must be some way to measure the level of impairment as a result of fatigue.
I am not certain of the science behind it. I wish there was some quick, accurate, inexpensive way to measure it though that has scientific validity.
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Panama Jack
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Panama Jack »

navajo_jay wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:12 am I had to use the Fatigue call a few times, and every time I felt stupid, and telling myself maybe I wasn't that tired, oh I'm letting my company, my passengers, my colleagues, etc.
You are not alone on that. The real question is how many times you probably felt fatigued and didn't call it. That's probably where the numbers get interesting.

The high level of automation and reliability of modern transport aircraft masks the problem. There have been times when I was on the flight deck on some oceanic sector, 4am home base time, with the other pilot fast asleep (taking controlled rest) thinking to myself "I don't think I would have the where-with-all right now to deal with an emergency like what we are thrown at in the simulator during recurrent". My company SOP's do allow hand-flying but ask that we take into account the other pilot's fatigue level prior to going less that fully automated. Yet we need to also be prepared to be able to handle a real emergency while on duty if it were to occur, with a combination of manual flying skills, good situational awareness, and some creativity when the autoflight crutch is snatched away.

The current situation is part of the aviation business model, and let's understand it as one which gives Canadian operators a competitive edge as they are able to use their scarce resources (pilots) more. So of course they will lobby against any efforts to reduce them, that is a pretty rational reaction. Unfortunately they do not seem to understand the risk that fatigued pilots pose on their operation, or they have already assessed that the risk is at an acceptable level. It will take more newsworthy occurrences to change that, unfortunately. I call it "blood priority," and sadly it is the way most major aviation safety improvements have been made.
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by Gannet167 »

Fatigue has been making the news for ages. This is nothing new. It will take blood and public outcry before we do anything about it.

In 1996, 22 years ago, a study was conducted by Dr. Hal Weinberg from UBC on Canadian Forces pilots doing long haul flights to Bosnia. The study can be found https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Yugoslavia. It's a pretty scathing look at how sleep drunk pilots can get. It's quite a thorough and well conducted scientific look at multiple aspects.

in 2001, 17 years ago, Transport Canada commissioned Dr. Weinberg to do research in pilot fatigue. That research was completed and given to TC with 6 recommendations including linking duty time and crew rest to pilots' home time zone circadian rhythm. TC asked Weinberg to delete 4 of the 6 recommendations. "Internal emails obtained by CBC found that Weinberg was asked by then director-general of civil aviation at Transport Canada to remove four of his six recommendations until further study. The deleted sections called for duty schedules to take the individual's circadian rhythms into account. "Somebody taking off at, let's say, two o'clock in the morning is not the same as they are taking off at nine o'clock in the morning after eight hours of sleep," Weinberg told the CBC. The followup research never happened, says Weinberg."

CBC did a piece on pilot fatigue in 2010, 8 years ago, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/pilot-fa ... s-1.910002 in which they raised concerns over outdated regulations and the severe level of fatigue that's possible even when legal to fly. CBC also did a 3 part video expose on pilot fatigue, also produced in 2010. It's pretty well done, for some reason part 2 is hard to find but part 1 and 3 are here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/dea ... -1.1794302
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1452942653

TC, our national regulator, responsible for public safety, supposed to be basing policy on scientific research tried to suppress the recommendations of an expert who conducted a thorough study and came up with hard facts to base recommendations on. That report commissioned by TC is almost impossible to find online, if I remember right, TC didn't want it public. If I find a copy, I'll post it here.

The RCAF, with its draconian duty day rules and very "flexible" take on crew rest also did a study in 2013 looking at some of its long haul flights, after a number of fairly significant safety incidents. (This was 17 years after the original study that Dr. Weinberg conducted.) They concluded the work schedule "produced very deleterious levels of cognitive effectiveness in that about 82% of the time of all 11 flights were spent at performance levels equivalent to being very intoxicated with blood alcohol levels off the scale. During the last 6 flights, modeled performance was especially worrisome and ranged from 48% to 60%"

http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/fli ... s/hnwx1d0d

This is just a quick and non-exhaustive (pun intended) look at some of the literature out there in recent years, in Canada. There's mountains more research from NASA, USAF, USN, FAA, and multiple other reputable sources.

The evidence is all there. It's been studied thoroughly. Nothing has changed.
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goingnowherefast
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Re: Fatigue is finally making the news

Post by goingnowherefast »

Regulators are usually written in blood. Nobody has died in a newsworthy story yet. Unfortunately nearly killing 1000 people (SFO incident) still isn't enough.

The truly sad fact is NASA studies (or otherwise) aren't good enough for Mr Garneau, he must be waiting for dead Canadians before making change. Probably going to be the most preventable deaths in history.
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