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Fatigue on Airline Pilots Airline pilots, especially those on international routes, often suffer jet lag fatigue caused by many hours of flying through different time zones. To guard against excessive pilot fatigue that could result in unsafe flying conditions, the FAA requires airlines to allow pilots at least 8 hours of uninterrupted rest in the 24 hours before finishing their flight duty. The work of test pilots, who check the flight performance of new and experimental planes, may be dangerous. Pilots who are crop dusters may be exposed to toxic chemicals and seldom have the benefit of a regular landing strip. Helicopter pilots involved in rescue and police work may be subject to personal injury. Although flying does not involve much physical effort, the mental stress of being responsible for a safe flight, regardless of the weather, can be tiring.
Pilots must be alert and quick to react if something goes wrong, particularly during takeoff and landing. Fatigue is an important factor that afflicts the pilot community. If one goes by the investigation reports that follow air crashes. Investigators found that the pilots involved have not had sufficient rest.
In the beginning, when the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) introduced the Flight and Duty Time Limitations (FDTL), it laid down a limit of 125 hours of flying per month. The national carriers, with the strength of the Pilots Union, had a more restrictive limitation, which made flying a safer bet, as far as the fatigue factor was concerned. This limit was further modified to a limit of 1, 000 hours of flight time a year. Apart from the flight time limit, another important factor was the "rest period. " It was assumed that a rest of eight hours was sufficient.
And, till date, the DGCA has not found fit to introduce scaled rest period based on the time a pilot commences his duty. That is the normal aviation practice. They have taken into consideration the "circadian rhythm" and its effect on the body, Indian Airlines sources at the airport here say. Named as "Additional Crew Member" (ACM), the system is subjected to "violation and has now become a money spinning menace in the sky, " the sources said.
Enquiries reveal that the ACM was being blatantly misused to make a pilot fly from place to place on the aircraft. The modus operandi is that the flying crew does not have the mandatory rest before operating a flight. Seasoned commanders and line-pilots flying with private airlines say that the ACM travel only eats into the rest periods of the pilots. When a pilot travels as an ACM, no ticket is issued, thereby avoiding the Inland Air Travel Tax (IATT), depriving the Government's revenue, the sources point out.
Usually, the DGCA uses different yardsticks for pilots of the private airlines and the national carriers. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) has lodged protests over this. However, the issue of ACM, the official Union for the cockpit crew chose to remain silent. The reason is not far to seek. Pilots on the rolls with the Indian Airlines get paid by the hour, whether they are operating crew or they are travelling as Acm's. Further research in needed in this area, in particular to investigate the effect of chronic fatigue on immune system function as well as to investigate the potential synergies of cosmic radiation, disturbed circadian rhythm, and excessive sun bathing.
It is of interest that exposure to solar radiation influences local and systemic immune responses. UV-B seems to be the most efficient in altering immune responses, likely related to the capacity of UV-B energy to affect antigen presentation in skin by interacting with epidermal Langerhans cells. Chronic sleep loss including circadian disruption may also produce immunologic and endocrine effects on, the wide range of body functions controlled by the internal biological clock including body temperature, digestion, physical and mental performance, and endocrine and immune functions (Dinges et al, 1995). Understanding the physiological significance of chronic fatigue and potential immunologic changes will require additional research. Indeed, the critical question is whether chronic fatigue and/ or chronic sleep loss compromises the health of the individual The next phase of our epidemiological research will be to begin initial investigations into the incidence of melanoma and other disease outcomes in a group of airline pilots as related to the factors of short versus long haul operations, and overnight operations. Currently, our research group is examining if chronic low-dose radiation exposure can be detected using biological markers; such as chromosomal changes in circulating white blood cells.
The primary objective is to develop a better understanding of the potential biological hazards in airline pilots chronically exposed to low radiation doses. This would be the first North American study to investigate radiation-related biological markers in this professional group. Fatigue has been blamed in numerous aviation accidents over the years and is a continuing problem facing crews flying aircraft of all sizes. But how can a pilot recognize when he or she is too tired to fly? What roles do sleep cycles; dehydration, nutrition and illness play in identifying and responding to fatigue? Ave contributor Mark Brandon Print explores some of these accidents and what pilots can do to minimize fatigue's effects.
My mind clicks on and off. I try letting one eyelid close at a time while I prop the other with my will. But the effect is too much, sleep is winning, my whole body argues dully that nothing, nothing life can attain is quite as desirable as sleep. My mind is losing resolution and control. " Charles Lindbergh about his 1927 transatlantic flight. Many pilots have heard the story of the pilot who fell asleep with his autopilot on and woke up two hours from the nearest land with only one hour of fuel remaining.
The story may be just an "airborne legend, " dreamed up by a group of hangar-flying buddies after a long day of towing gliders. True or not, no pilot with a modicum of experience can deny having occasionally had to battle a bout of fatigue or that it somehow affected their performance. There are many documented accidents that can be attributed to pilot fatigue. Most recently would be the June 1999 fatal runway accident of American Airlines Flight 1420 in which a McDonnell Douglas MD- 82 overran the end of the runway, went down an embankment, and impacted approach light structures after landing at the Adams Field Airport in Little Rock, Ark. Thunderstorms and heavy rain were reported in the area at the time of the accident. There were 11 fatalities, including the aircraft captain, and numerous injuries among the 145 passengers and crew aboard the flight.
While the final report has not been released, it is expected that fatigue will be listed as a contributing cause. The problem is not limited to aviation either. In maritime events, fatigue has been cited as contributing to the Exxon Valdez [ 9 ] and World Prodigy [ 10 ] disasters. It was a factor in the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Bhopal and affected the decision-making process of the doomed space shuttle Challenger mission Symptoms: The list goes on and on. So how do we address the issue? What can be done to rectify the problem?
Before we can offer any solutions, we have to identify the problem. Fatigue is closely interrelated to other problems in that it can be a symptom of them, or it can be the cause. The most obvious cause of fatigue would be a lack of sleep, but other factors would include stress, anxiety and poor health. It can also be a cause of these problems. Furthermore, fatigue can be the symptom of other problems such as hypoxia and dehydration. Symptoms of fatigue include a feeling of indifference to one's performance, increased reaction time, a decreased ability to concentrate on multiple tasks, fixation, short-term memory loss, impaired judgment, impaired decision-making ability, destructibility, sloppy flying skills, reduced visual perception, loss of initiative, personality changes and depression.
To understand the problem of inadequate sleep, we should understand what sleep is. There are four stages of sleep starting with about 10 minutes of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep where the mind is active (dreaming) and the smaller muscles twitch. During the next three stages the mind and body slow down. After 45 - 70 minutes, we return to REM. People go through this cycle several times through the night and an interruption of any stage (i. e. , the hotel maid waking you up to see if you need the room cleaned, or a phone call from dispatch to tell you that they have received your fax) will render that whole cycle ineffectual.
One major cause of sleep deprivation is a disruption of our internal light / dark cycle, called circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms are the biological clock existing in our brains since prehistoric times, which tell us that we should work when it is light (day) and sleep when it is dark (night). The word comes from the Latin "circa" (about), and "dies" (day). Circadian changes make a person try to sleep when their mind is wide-awake, and they force them to remain awake when their mind is screaming to go to bed. Long schedules and changes in circadian rhythms are among the most common causes of fatigue faced by pilots, mainly because there is little that can be done to change them. We are all subject to these factors and the best defense is to limit their effects by controlling the fatiguing factors that we can.
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Research essay sample on Fatigue On Airline Pilots
