Preparing to operate long-haul at night

[Nicholas49]

I would like to ask a question based on a practical example. My sister is due to fly to Hong Kong tonight from LHR. A lot of the passengers on the flight will intend to try to get some sleep. The operating crew need to be awake. Now I know there is discussion about flight duty and fatigue - I really don't want to open that can of worms here. I know too that there will be at least three pilots to enable them each to take a break at some point in the flight. I know about controlled sleep (or whatever the term is). I also know that the airline will have needed to ensure that the operating crew have had sufficient rest before operating the flight. And it’s this latter point I would like to ask about.

Assume you are due to pilot this flight, have known this from your roster a couple of weeks in advance and that you live within driving distance of Heathrow (i.e. you're going to go to the airport later this afternoon to prepare for the flight). My question in a nutshell: how do you prepare in the days leading up to the flight to get yourself in a position that you are fit to stay awake all night and pilot an aircraft? Is it a question of forcing yourself to go to bed progressively later and wake up later until you are sleeping during the day and awake at night? I imagine this wouldn't always be possible, depending on your previous duty periods etc. I am correct, am I not, in thinking that the operating crew will have had to adjust their 'body clock' in some way?

I ask this out of curiosity and I know there's not one answer to this question, but I am intrigued to know how you do it.

Thanks

[Notso Fantastic]

I did longhaul for 24 years. You can't practically, with a family, 'train' yourself in the days prior. Sometimes you may be lucky to sleep late or grab a nap before leaving. The long long flights have a 1/3 rest time. I usually used to find I could go long into the flight before crumpling, often a short period of extreme fatigue could be shrugged off and pass. Some people try and stay on UK time, but I always hated sleeping on sunny days, so I always slipped into local time with judicious naps.

[grounded27]

I did longhaul for 24 years. You can't practically, with a family, 'train' yourself in the days prior. Sometimes you may be lucky to sleep late or grab a nap before leaving. The long long flights have a 1/3 rest time. I usually used to find I could go long into the flight before crumpling, often a short period of extreme fatigue could be shrugged off and pass. Some people try and stay on UK time, but I always hated sleeping on sunny days, so I always slipped into local time with judicious naps.

I know it is difficult but that is just being irresponsible. Blackout blinds and sleep deprivation if need be to allow for proper rest prior to a scheduled flight. Well as far as the family goes, if they come first and prevent you from obtaining proper sleep, you should have taken the pay cut to fly smaller aircraft in the daytime. Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome.

[Mr Angry from Purley]

nick49
Interesting question
Every Pilot has different ways of coping. On paper the best prep would be the pilot in LHR the night before and either having a normal sleep and a nap mid afternoon, or staying up till early morning then sleeping during the day.
The reality is many commute pre flight, or do normal everyday tasks then go to work. The good news is they will enjoy in flight rest, or nap (which is promoted in most UK Airlines) on the Flight Deck (one pilot for aprox 30 mins)
and being professionals "manage" their fatigue as notoso suggests

[Denti]

It depends on many different things. For example you could have a normal duty that ends at minimum rest before check in for that long haul flight, meaning you will get for example a 10 hour rest period and nothing more. That is of course not quite enough to change your body clock. Even worse, depending on company those flight could be done legally with only two pilots (most major airlines augment their crews though). European rules allow it, other rules might be even more relaxed and in the future european rules will be as well.

I could best deal with all night flights by staying awake the previous night and sleeping during the day, however i needed both the previous day and night off to be able to pull that off, not a regular occurrence. Usually for more than half the flight time one of both pilots would nap though, at the end of a grueling summer season that would increase to about 90% of the flight time.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

<<I know it is difficult but that is just being irresponsible. >>

I don't think so. I was an air traffic controller for most of my life and worked some pretty horrific duty patterns abroad. I never slept prior to a night duty and only managed a few hours the following day as I find it extremely difficult to sleep with noise/light. Like long-haul pilots I was always able to get a few hours rest in the night which was adequate for me. Many people I worked with functioned in a similar manner.

[Notso Fantastic]

Well that's me told off then! It also happens to be the experience of almost everybody I flew with in longhaul, which I managed pretty successfully for umpteen years.

So I put my cards on the table. What experience do you have Grounded (location 'Planet Earth'!), in longhaul flying, and exactly what do you know about it? You are American, a country not known for running real longrange flights in heavy schedules around the world. I used to even do transPacific out of the US to Australia as well as the other way around, UK to New Zealand. Occasionally we used to see a Pan Am at Bombay or Nairobi, or United at SYD, but that was it.

[grounded27]

Flew ACMI as a Maintenance Rep for 4 years, chased aircraft around the clock for years prior. I had many 40 hr duty days as a young man and caught my sleep when I could. When doing the flight mech thing, would purposefully stay up to sleep during an 8 -10 hour leg (freighters) so I was on my game when it was time to step up to plate. I would see 3 crews quite often sometimes 3-5 legs before I saw a real bed. Having said that, ACMI being even less reliable than sched long haul and I did the best I could do to have a rested mind and body when my duties were expected of me.

As for the family statement, well I put my wife over my job and quit. Took less pay and concentrated on a different path (still an AMT). I am back making 40% more pay than I earned as a MX rep and see the wife every night. There is no reason not to make every reasonable effort to show up to work for a safety sensitive position well rested!

[Notso Fantastic]

So your experience is napping all flight to save yourself for your brief burst of action on turnarounds. Easy to do 40 hour duties if you can sleep most of your long '8 hour' sectors! I used to fly up to 14 1/2 hour legs, (with a relief crew), and 11 hour time changes to be handled as well. Any real pilot knows you cannot sleep to order.
I'm still speechless at being called 'irresponsible' by a non-pilot doing a vastly different job with frankly not a great deal of parallel (but not quite). It's remarks like yours (from a person who has no concept and does something quite different anyway) that put me off this place for years.

[FLCH]

Notso, I think the majority of us are with you as far as dealing with flying at night for a long time, you deal with it as best your body can take, and your comments are on the mark.

Besides sleeping while the pub is open ? ...Sacrilege !!

[RoyHudd]

Silly stuff

I completely agree with you Notso. As a current long-haul pilot, I do exactly what you did. Ignore the silly "contributions" from non-pilots. Sadly, they abound on this site. Doubtless I will get flamed shortly....

[parabellum]

Nicholas - Similar to the pilots above but I did have a system, of sorts!

Always carried ear plugs, eye shades and bull dog clips and duct tape to ensure curtains didn't let in too much light. My procedure was to get up early on the day of the flight and go for walks, do something useful if at home, generally not sit around waiting, then go to bed at least four and possibly six hours before call time after having a meal, the meal causes blood to leave the brain and go to the stomach to process the food.
Even used to go to the gym sometimes but this has to be over at least three hours before you want to sleep as the adrenaline is high after exercise and may prevent sleep.

The USAF did extensive study of pre-flight rest, meals, cockpit lighting etc. and discovered that resting in a darkened room at a reasonable temperature was about 70% as good as actual sleep, so lying there fretting about not sleeping is pointless and I found I would almost always drift off into some real sleep. I always went to local time away from home.

On board the aircraft, once settled in the cruise, ensure cockpit lighting is reasonably high, this helps to reduce fatigue, (darkness induces sleep!), keeping the whole FD dim achieves nothing as your eyes are actually focused only nine inches on the other side of the cockpit glass!

[grounded27]

I fully expected to get ganged up on as is natural being a pilot dominated forum, you wish to rationalize your decisions, understood. I also understand the life is difficult and from my perspective understand the conflicting expectations of career and family and how to manage them both responsibly and effectively, it is a tall task I was not up for. I had many opportunities to take the PFE, flight training path and declined thus decided to be grounded at 27.

Always carried ear plugs, eye shades and bull dog clips and duct tape to ensure curtains didn't let in too much light. My procedure was to get up early on the day of the flight and go for walks, do something useful if at home, generally not sit around waiting, then go to bed at least four and possibly six hours before call time after having a meal, the meal causes blood to leave the brain and go to the stomach to process the food.
Even used to go to the gym sometimes but this has to be over at least three hours before you want to sleep as the adrenaline is high after exercise and may prevent sleep.

This sir is what I would applaud as a strong effort to be prepared for your duties.

On a side note after the first 6 months of my flight mechanic career (love how you took the quick shot to belittle me over), I got some of my best sleep on a currier floor being rocked to bed by a large aircraft that I learned to love. Every bit of information I could learn about flying this aircraft at that young age was cherished observing thousands of takeoff's and not so allways pretty challenging landings, it helped to define me as the man I am today in both my personal and professional life.

[Dan Winterland]

Nicholas 49 has opened a can of worms with this one.

From my perspective, having flown LHR-HKG many times with my previous company, I would try and get some sleep before the one and a half hour drive to LHR and reporting. (Note, it took about 30 minutes to get from the staff car park to the Queens building then). We would depart at about 8pm, but eould get about 5 hours rest in flight as there were four crew on the flight. Landing at 4pm local time HKG wasn't an issue. The return after 48 hours rest was benign as well. Departing at midnight HKG time, about 4pm body time and getting 6 hours in flight rest was OK. It was a good long haul schedule, the best in out network and generally, the pilots didn't find it hard. There were far worse schedules inclusing the ones that had you operating 2 crew for 9 hours on an authorised variation to the FTLs and returning on a departure at midnight body clock time for an eight hour flight.

Whatever the schedule and no matter how hard you try, you just can't get enough quality rest outside you circadian night time. A couple of hours at best, in daylight, with kids in the house, with traffic/aircraft noise, cleaners vacuuming the hallway outside your hotel room and other distractions - your rest during your circadian day is not going to be effective because it's extremely unlikely you will go into the REM stage which is essential for quality rest.

Another thing to note is that although the effect of one flight can lead to acute fatigue which although can be a risk is often overcome by the increase in adrenaline at the critical stages of the flight, the result of a long haul lifestyle is that the acute fatigue is usually present on top of a systematic and debilitating chronic fatigue. This is when it becomes dangerous. Consider doing up to six UK to East coast of the US flights in a month (which I have done). The return flight means you lose one complete nights sleep each pattern, six times a month. Now imagine doing this for months on end and you start to get the picture.

For non pilots to start postulating that long haul pilots are being irresponsible by not resting properly before reporting, you don't know what you are talking about. Perhaps you should be more concerned that in April 2012, the scientificly proven CAP 371 flight time limitations (which in most pilot's opinion are about the maximum limits of safe operation) are going to be replaced with the EASA FTLs which will allow pilots to work for much longer. Unfortuantely, these limits have been pushed by pressure from the industry and are not backed up by any scientific study or evidence. Compare this with the US Fedral Aviation Authority who are currently introducing more restrictive flihgt time limitations after a fatal crash two years ago caused by pilot fatigue.

The press loves to pillory the occaisional pilot who has been caught reporting under the effects of alchohol, perhaps we should take note of the British Airline Pilot's comparison of a fatigued pilot having had only a couple of hours effective rest in the last 24 being intoxicated to the level of having just drunk four pints of beer. I would say from my experience that is pretty accurate -and yet this is perfectly legal.

And to answer your original question Nciholas 49, just imagine that you boss has asked you to work from midnignt to 8am instead of nine to five. How do you think you will be forming at the most critical stage at 8am?



A before some @rse comes on and says "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'', I already have. I got out of long haul and into short haul six years ago. I feel much better.

[Denti]

Even short haul can be a nightmare depending on route network and FTLs. While the UK still has some legal protection via CAP 371 the rest of europe already operates to EU-OPS FTL which allow up to 14 hour days with two pilots (or 11:45 through the night). Or even worse up to 18 hour days if you have a break in-between. The latter one is quite often used in short haul operation.

So it is quite legal to operate a flight from central europe to the west coast with just two pilots, or the same on the way back but the flight back starts in the evening which is even worse as it counts as having started at dawn since the home timezone counts for FTL calculation until you have been at the down route destination for more than 48 hours, which nobody can afford nowadays.

And on the short haul side a typical pattern would start at 5:00 with a three sector day landing around noon, followed by a minimum rest of 10 hours, then starting another 11:30 shift through the night, followed by minimum rest of 12 hours and then followed by a 5 sector duty after which you completely pass out. Do that for a whole summer accumulating 100 hours and around 250 duty hours a month and cumulative fatigue will get you in the end.

[wiggy]

I did longhaul for 24 years. You can't practically, with a family, 'train' yourself in the days prior

Having done the same for much the same length of time I agree entirely.

Nicholas

FWIW a longhaul flight often crossing multiple time zones will often as not have a return sector 24 or 48 hours later. As a result even if you've somehow "trained" yourself for the outbound sector by resting/acclimatising your sleep pattern to fit in with report local time at base you almost certainly won't have time to "train" or acclimatise yourself for the return.

Ask anyone European based reporting for duty in the far east for a morning flight back home ( possibly around 0800 local departure, which could be around 0000 - 0200 european time) how they have slept the previous night or how they feel and the reply is normally: " and ".

Nevertheless the flight will no doubt be legal according to the regulator and the company so it must be ok....

[mutt]

So it is quite legal to operate a flight from central europe to the west coast with just two pilots

Denti is there a flight time associated with the duty time?

We operate with no flight time limitations thanks to FAR91, but we would attempt to avoid scheduling a single crew for flights like that.

[Notso Fantastic]

Consider doing up to six UK to East coast of the US flights in a month (which I have done). The return flight means you lose one complete nights sleep each pattern, six times a month. Now imagine doing this for months on end and you start to get the picture.

I was rosterered 11 US East Coast Atlantic crossings over 2 consecutive 4 week periods one summer. I remember it as tiring as it is possible to be. Also going shorthaul, 6 day blocks with many earlies and truncated sleeps gets you just as tired, but in a slightly different way.

I'm absolutely astonished that the duty hours pilots produce vastly outweigh the normal 9-5 duty hours that normal people sustain- there is none of the protection for time on duty that 'normal' people have- it's absolutely incredible. The tiredness pilots (and cabin crew!) experience is 'superhuman'- long duty hours combined with massive time changes and irregular overnight working- frankly a killing combination. And so many times you see the press refer to pilots 'working' 1000 hrs/year= 20 hrs A WEEK! That's flying hours only! The outrage from laymen is loud! The present duty limitations are at the top scale of human limitations for a satisfactory life- I watch the new attempt at increasing duty limitations with disgust and horror.

Fate has grounded me now- my involuntary departure from the industry has coincided with a vastly more relaxed existence- fortunately I have a delightful small plane to play with. Once a pilot, always a pilot, but my goodness, working for it is becoming hard!

[wiggy]

I watch the new attempt at increasing duty limitations with disgust and horror.

You're not the only one.

[Denti]

Denti is there a flight time associated with the duty time?

Well, max scheduled flight duty time is 14 hours for a two pilot crew. That includes up to 2 scheduled landings, for every additional landing you have to subtract half an hour. Since flight duty time begins to tick with your reporting time the maximum block time is usually 13 hours, however if you go with a reduced briefing time you can probably get it to 13:15 or so. There is no limit on time at the controls though.

With captains discretion, which can be used before starting the first sector, up to 15 hours flight duty time is legal as long as you do not do more than two landings.

We had a route from central europe to south africa which was usually planned at 13:59 with a reduced reporting time to stay legal. We had to discontinue that after a couple years when the authority began to question why there was a need to use captains discretion on more than 95% of the flights. That was back before we started to augment crews, which was introduced by pressure from crews via their union. Since none of our aircraft has crew bunks (it's just a blocked business seat) our augmentation system is not considered legally as augmented crew so we are still limited by regulations about non-augmented crews.

Captains discretion has to be reported to the authority. Since the amount of reports is so huge they decided that everything with less than an hour of discretion won't be looked at. They told the airlines as much which increased the number of reports to several thousands a month from our 1400 pilot company due to very bad crew planning. Thanks to a much more rigid CLA we managed to decrease that somewhat in the meantime, however planning is still bad and the limit of whatever regulation is still the target, not a limit.