Pilots falling asleep BEFORE they report.

[Devils Advocate]

norman_nigel I too concur...... wherein perhaps all one can say, given the obviously vast scale of this ‘problem’, is that it really must be down to just pure luck that airliners aren't falling from the skies on a regular basis with knackered commuter pilots zzzed’ing at their controls.

I once used to commute over 100 miles to work, then do a multi-sector scheduled service / 'low cost' day, then drive home after it and I felt fine the whole time; no incidents or accidents, consistently delivering a professional level of aircraft operation, good results in the sim & appraisals, never fell asleep either in the air or on the road, etc, ...... my commute seemingly had not the slightest effect on me - so there !

However, the funny thing is that, now ( working in ‘charter’ ), when the kids / wife / postman / gasman / neighbours manage to wake me up between night flights - which I didn't do in the previous job and wherein I presently only live 30 miles from work - I've had more times when I've felt tired with the present regime than with the former & its commute - so go figure, or maybe it’s just different strokes for different folks ?!

JustBelow - When was the last time you heard of somebody calling crewing and using the ‘F’(atigue) word as a result of, say, their sleep being disturbed ( by, say, kids / wife / postman / gasman / neighbours ) preceding a night-flight wherein one might be just a tired - if not more so - albeit that one might live close to the airport ?

Ps. What FTL's are applied to the armed forces ?

[Justbelowcap]

Thats kinda the whole point isn't it. You either think that fatigue and tiredness is a safety issue or you don't. Do you not think that there have been accidents and incidents in the past caused by fatigue? Maybe you are immune normal-nigel from making mistakes due to being tired. In my airline there have been several incidents recently caused by pretty simple errors. The Chief pilot wrote that we should all be a bit more professional but didn't at any point equate those simply errors to fatigue. Wierd as these were all classic examples as the type of errors that causes hull loses. Taking off without flap will kill people, so will not reacting to a GPWS warning, so will lining up without line up clearance. These are all the types of incidents made more likely by fatigue.

Very shortly the Euro FTL changes are going to be implemented, it isn't any good complaining about these unless our own house is order. At the moment I feel that some are:

a) poorly educated about the effects of fatigue

b) think it only applies to others and are not aware of the degradation of their airmanship as they get more and more tired.

c) Are aware but, even so, blatantly ignore the 90 min guidance on the grounds they can have a house with one more bedroom at the expense of reporting fully rested.

If you think it is melodramatic to equate tired pilots to airplane crashes then I suggest you go and have another read of your human factor books.

Are you guys saying that fatigue is not a factor in the error chain? If so then your arguments are fair enough.
I believe it can be one of the major causes to errors being made. Maybe as I've got older I've just become more susceptable to tiredness but I'm very aware how my own performance takes a dive when I am tired. generally I have to take a bit longer to do everything when at the end of a tiring day. Probably the most dangerous part is that it effects my mood and I become more introvert, less able to absorb the info that is given to me from outside sources. More likely to ignore a subtle bit of advice from my FO, missing radio calls, much more likely to just get a quick solution to a problem rather than the correct one, etc etc.

When training or checking it is even easier to see how pilots performances dip at the end of long days. We shouldn't be making these days any longer for ourselves.