It Staggers Me!
Why, oh why, do we have to keep reinventing the wheel?
According to my father, lots of research into the effects of fatigue was done by the late Hugh Ruffel-Smith who was an AME at Farnborough I believe. I do not have access to the Belgrano to check in the library but did find some info a while ago but correct me if I am wrong on the following:
One of the things he did was to follow what was then BEA and BOAC crews around on flights following their rosters and the operation itself. I believe he initially proposed a point system which took into account even things like the number of RT calls and of course the obvious stuff like the number of sectors, time of day/night etc. I am assuming that CAP 371 is in a large part based on his research and it would be interesting to know if anyone knows if this assumption is correct?
He also did work with NASA monitoring performance of crews in simulators after they had been deliberately fatigued and measured the impairment in their performance.
Most of us now know that 24 hours without sleep is the same as a couple of pints in terms of our ability to judge and operate machinery, cars and dare I say it, an aircraft.
It is well documented what can lead to cumulative fatigue, where even if you have not actually been awake for 24 hours the effect is the same or worse. I can remember one summer flying charter with loads of roster changes, where I was standing in my kitchen early evening and people were talking to me and I realized I had not got a clue what was going. A few years later the company introduced blocked rosters which meant virtually no changes to one's published roster. I was shocked to find when I filled out my logbook one month, that I had done 98 hours in a month yet I did not feel tired. Having a stable roster allowed me to at least plan my life and my rest.
My current company supposedly operates to CAP371. We supposedly have an FRMS system in place. However, we do not have blocked rosters and roster changes are frequent. It says in CAP 371 that "rest periods between 18 and 36 hours should be avoided", yet this is the most common rest period. I believe partly as s result of this a lot of my colleagues are exhausted.
It seems the gist of the EASA proposals are if a company has rosters that are "green lighted" by the companies own FRMS that has been "green lighted" by EASA, then no further intervention is required by legislation or rules by EASA. If we did not have legislation, we would still have kids down coal mines and allowing a company to operate rosters in accordance with its own FRMS is to my mind a bit like putting the wolf in charge of the sheep! Honorable MOP please note!
We already knew what would lead to fatigue 40 odd years ago and it did not take new research by some Aussie company or similar to work it out (though if my company buys the AIMS "add on" provided by this company that will hopefully be a good thing but it is a "but"!)
CAP 371 was written some time ago and set out limits which we all know became targets for the company’s rosterers. This was before the advent of the LCCs and the increases in general of traffic. If anything, we should be reducing the limits in CAP 371 and not be allowing EASA to increase them.
PS Love the BALPA video.