Denmark: Public attention on pilots fatigue

[sporg]

The problems of pilot work schedules, and resulting fatigue, has now reached public attention in Denmark.

One of the big national newspapers, "Politiken", has launched a series of articles, after a questionnaire research among pilots revealed that:
90 percent had experienced to make mistakes due to fatigue.
50 percent had fallen asleep during flight, without notifying their copilots.
43 percent has had incidents or near-incidents due to fatigue.

One of the problems revealed is that the pilots do not report the happenings, partly due to the fatigue itself, partly due to a feeling that "it does no good anyway".

Could one guess, that the missing reports might also be due to fear of repercussions from their employers?

The first article has been followed up with interviews with anonymous pilots, speaking about the experiences they have had.

The attention has reached politicial level, with politicians now starting to demand the matter being taken up in EU, as the problem can not be solved on a local level.
One politician even ironically suggested that there be placed two live pigs on each airplane, since it seems that animal transport are under much stricter regulations in the EU than air transport :hmm:

Sadly the articles are only in Danish, but they are fairly readable through Google translate:
Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpolitiken.dk%2Ferhverv%2FECE1258511%2Fudmatte de-piloter-falder-i-soevn-og-begaar-fejl-i-cockpittet%2F)
("Equal on the table" is a mistranslation of "fatalities".)

PS. Not a pilot myself, just a SLF with a natural interest in the well-being of you people up front ;)

[Airbus Girl]

Yes and if you look up the regulations for coach drivers, they are far more regulated and do far less hours than us pilots do too!! EASA are of course swayed by the airlines, who are fighting hard to make pilots work even harder by trying to discredit scientific studies that show that the current proposed EASA regulations (which are worse than UK CAA) are fatiguing.
Fatigue is a major issue but having pilots fly less hours costs money of course, which the airlines don't want to pay, and the passengers don't want to pay.

[sporg]

Yes, the coach driver (or in this case truck driver) regulations was exactly what the ironic politician hinted at.

In my spare job as a bus driver, I am only allowed to drive for 8½ hours per day, with 11 hours of rest in between. And maximum 40 hours pr week. A few days can exceed the working hours/decrease rest down to 9 hours, but maximum two days in that week. And then I'm obliged to extra rest hours before the schedule can resume.

And what I am hearing is up to 15 hour days for pilots, and up to 60 hour weeks? To me that sounds insane.
I know the long days in some cases can not be avoided, but there need to be good recovery periods in between.

The latest development in Dk is that the minister of transportation no longer trust the data from the local air traffic authorities. He now wants a separate investigation conducted by the EU. He says he has no reason not to trust the information that came out in the "Politiken" research.

However he of course also put some blame on the pilots, for not properly reporting the incidents to the authorities.

Let's hope some good can finally come out of this.

[flipster]

http://www.easa.eu.int/ws_prod/r/doc/research/FTL%20Study%20Final%20Report.pdf

See here for the EASA scientific research report


(it is v good if not quite perfect) but which EASA then conveniently ignored when writing their proposed FTL for all EU states. The UK's CAP 371 is a leap ahead of these proposals and UK politicians, as well as BALPA and ECA, are fighting the EU proposals - not sure what the CAA are doing but surely they would be irresponsible to go back against their own publications - also based on over 40 years of scientific study and research.
However, greater press attention on this required in all EU states whose airline safety will undoubteldy be threatened by these 'positively dangerous' EU FTL proposals. It is good to hear that other countries are equally worried.

BALPA's 'wake up' pressure-group website is here
FTL Campaign Site • BALPA FTL Campaign Home (http://wakeup.balpa.org/)

see also the FTL thread on Rumours and News