Testing for fatigue
Perhaps someone could weigh in on this adjunct to the dissucsion of alcohol testing--namely that of testing for fatigue.
I flew with a gent once who could speak at length about a simple procedure measuing the dialation speed of the pupils as a marker of fatigue/impairment. I know if the United States a police officer will often shine a penlight at a suspects eyes to get a rough guess as to what he/she is dealing with. (I did say rough guess so I know it does not hold up for anything)
Apparently rather sophisitcated, but portable, devices are under consideration (or are in test) that can do this quite rapidly. From what he maintained, it gives a very decent idea as just how faitgued one is.
Now I realize that there are legions of complexities that are probably involved in testing pilots on this, but it does raise an interesting question regarding a fitness to fly scenario. I know it it not as onerous as how the Europeans and UK carriers can schedule, but one can fly 15 days straight from the US on 5 three day trips--thus 10 ocean crossings in those 15 days with no day off between trips. I have seen others assigned these types of schedules and fatigue was a factor that forced them to stand down. Again, a light schedule by what the Europeans do, but I use it as an example of a pattern that could induce enough fatigue to serve as a good test for such an experiment.
Anyone with medical experience that can comment on this? Is it viable? If so I can imagine that air carriers around the world would spend millions to fight it ever being implemented. How else could they run their schedules?