More on Pilot Fatigue

[GTFA]

Very interesting Don. Not quite the response I was looking for but relevant and poignant as usual.

A couple of things; People tend to overcomplicate their own lives because they are not resistant enough to marketing campaigns by communication and other digital gadgetry not to mention the emphasis on entertainment factor in the news. Etc.

Re. Michael Freidman. Just becasue someone wins the Nobel prize doesn't make him right. (For example Torsten Wiesel was awarded the Nobel for establishing where the visual process occurs in our brain which substantiated the localization theory. He is now on a team that is doing work which totally opposses what he reported to be fact.)

phx74. Regardless of other rules legal or not the bottom line is that a pilot has the responsiblity supported by CARs to not work while impaired by fatigue. All the scheduling rules are meant to support this underlying rule. I think another thing we really need to address is what is considered impaired?

Good idea to keep this conversation in the forefront.

Nice talking to you Don. Can I reach you by email?

GTFA

[Don Hudson]

Executive Functions and the Ability to Sustain Vigilance During Sleep Loss

Interesting article - available at $15 but the science is out there and available to regulators, safety specialists, pilots and executives alike - it is a matter of building the right mitigation program and is not a matter for politicians, of all kinds public or private, to resolve - it is a matter for the Regulator to come to terms with in cooperation with the airlines.

GTFA - email address sent by PM

[DEFCON]

Don

"physician error kills about 45,000 patients per year in the U.S."

I think you'll find the number is closer to 120,000. Death from “all” the various failures of the US medical system totals approximately 1M per year.

Canada follows the US model closely on a comparative population basis. In the same weird and not so wonderful ways, we’ll kill 10% of the US number.

[Innuendo]

Would it work to have a crew based in Hong Kong fly the aircraft to YVR say and then deadhead back right away and do the reverse, have the YVR crew fly to Hong Kong and then dead head back?

Better make sure you get a Limo to and from work or your life insurance paid up included in that deal. You would be a menace to every one on the road on your way home.

[DEFCON]

As I recall, Nationair employed this practice in an effort to efficiently manage their crews.

[IFG]

I think you'll find the number is closer to 120,000. Death from “all” the various failures of the US medical system totals approximately 1M per year ....

Defcon - Curious, that's a very large subset of the 2.4M total number of deaths per year in the U.S from any & all causes. Can you substantiate the claim?

[IFG]

Truer words, etc...and most do, coming to work properly rested. Even then, I used to know a few who commuted from, say, the Caribbean, to Vancouver and then went flying over the Pacific or some who lived in the Southern US or in Europe and did the same. Most commuters know the rules and plan ahead but a few take extreme risk  .... etc. etc.

The commuters always get dragged through the mud on fatigue issues. Pilots who domicile at their base must manage their fatigue too - ref:

Fatigue is a symptom of our new, fasterpaced, information laden, high stress lifestyles. Not just duty times while at work. If you were to pay me enough to live in a quiet neighbourhood with a wife that can stay home and manage things while I'm away, and afford a decent car that doesn't break down on the way to the airport, and take restful vacations instead of chaotic misadventures to stay within my budget or have to stayhome to do repairs etc... I would come to work MUCH more rested, sleep better in my hotel room and stay much more clearly focussed on the task at hand during flight. Duty time is only a part of the puzzle.

When commuters are on a series of pairings, they are undistracted by all the tribulations of daily home life, which can really help the management of shifting rest periods. For every "I flew with a commuter who came in from ..." story, there are probably several that begin: "I flew with somebody who ... played golf all afternoon ... baby kept me up ... paving my driveway today ... [fill in the blank] ..."

I really doubt that poor fatigue management is any more characteristic of commuters than it is for those domiciled at their base.

Cheers, IFG

[GTFA]

A commuter, who is any good at it is probably better prepared stress/fatigue wise than someone who lives 15 minutes away from the airport.

So many things left undone at the last minute because you are only 15 minutes away.

[DEFCON]

IFG

I’ve attached an article I’ve pulled from the web.

“Medical malpractice is defined as when any treatment, lack of treatment, or departure from accepted medical standards, by a health care provider, results in harm to a patient. The types of medical malpractice are numerous. Here are some examples of medical malpractice.

· Improper treatment

· A delay in treatment which results in harm to a patient

· Prescription / Medication errors

· Wrong diagnosis

· Failure to treat

· Failure by the health-care provider to perform appropriate follow-up treatment.

Medical malpractice can result in the death or unnecessary suffering on behalf of the patient. There have been numerous incidents in the last few years, where hospital/medical staff errors have resulted in patients having the wrong limbs removed. I'm sure you've read some of those horror stories. Did you know that the Journal of the American Medical Association, says that over 225,000 people die each year due to medical malpractice? As a matter of fact, medical malpractice has become the 3rd leading cause of death in America. Those 225,000 deaths due to medical malpractice are caused by these types of errors:

· 7,000 people die each year due to medication errors in hospitals

· 20,000 people die each year due to other types of errors in hospitals

· 12,000 people die each year due to unnecessary surgery

· 80,000 people die each year from nosocomial infections in hospitals

· 106,000 people die each year from adverse reactions to medications”

The numbers above are the product of statistics. I’ve borrowed the information from one “legal” site available amongst a sea of others. Statistics can be manipulated to serve a purpose as might be demonstrated through comparison with other sources.

My recollection comes from an article I read in a medical journal a couple of years ago. The article attempted to remove all the fog from the equation and portray a realistic pov on medical malpractice issues across the spectrum.

I will endeavor to locate this article. Please be patient, it will take some time!

[Guest rattler]

this may be of help / interest

ATW Daily News

IATA launches safety database

Thursday December 24, 2009

IATA unveiled several new safety initiatives, including a program called Fatigue Risk Management Systems designed to monitor flight crew fatigue and a Web-based Global Safety Information Center granting IATA members access to its internal safety databases. "The GSIG will enable airlines to benchmark their safety performance with other operators," Senior VP-Safety, Operations and Infrastructure Gunther Matschnigg noted at last week's press day in Geneva. "GSIC will help our member airlines to access new safety products and data, obtain current aviation safety statistics and historical data and conduct safety trend analysis and risk management."

All data is anonymous and access to the database is limited to contributing members, although DG and CEO Giovanni Bisignani reiterated his support for sharing data with other organizations. "Data is what will identify risks and drive progress on safety," he told reporters. "Earlier this year, ICAO Secretary General [Raymond ] Benjamin called for greater sharing of safety data. I fully agree. EASA, FAA and ICAO are rich in safety data as is IATA. I hope that we have made significant progress on a platform to share data among these organizations by the ICAO High-Level Meeting on Safety in March." GSIC should be up and running next month.

by Cathy Buyck

[moeman]

Should pilots be allowed to commute from another city without a mandatory break between the commute and the operating flight?

[Guest rattler]

Should pilots be allowed to commute from another city without a mandatory break between the commute and the operating flight?

Guess you would apply the same rules as for deadheading but then what about the chap that has a long ground commute to the airport? In other words where to you draw the line?

[handyman]

Pilots should pitch up sufficiently rested for their duty. Doesn't matter if it was a 3 hour flight or drive a commute is a commute.

Hour limits don't work unless they are very complex and duty oriented. 3 hours in the middle of the night versus mid-day for instance. Also, what about the long-haul pilot showing up at 10pm knowing 30 minutes after take-off he's going to bed?

Bottom line, pilots need to monitor themselves for the commute to work but schedulers need to be cognizant of realistic duty times for dead-heading. I personally have done several 24-26 hour duty days where my last 15 hours is all dead-heading...yuck!

[moeman]

Guess you would apply the same rules as for deadheading but then what about the chap that has a long ground commute to the airport? In other words where to you draw the line?

My point is that a lot of commuters have no problem adding several hours to their duty day by commuting as late as possible, thereby not giving themselves adequate rest before they fly. So if it's acceptable for many pilots to do what a lot of you fellows are doing, how can your union successfully argue that duty days are too long as they stand?

[Don Hudson]

moeman;

So if it's acceptable for many pilots to do what a lot of you fellows are doing, how can your union successfully argue that duty days are too long as they stand?

The issue can be argued successfully and without hypocrisy because what individual pilots choose to do in this regard is not the basis upon which a union forms its policies. Hopefully, a pilots' union will have done its homework and will have employed the available substantial information on fatigue to write such safety policy.

A union is not a regulatory body and does not have the powers of legally enforcing the union's own policies and so, in a society where individual rights enjoys strong support, the discussion then turns towards "the individual and his or her 'rights'", etc and the power of the union to require that members follow established policy. That some challenge it, (perhaps appropriately), does not invalidate the approach or the policy.

To me, the issue of commuting does not belong to the individual pilot but that is the way our society views "rights", as in, "nobody has the right to tell me where I can live". Fair enough. Most pilots govern themselves accordingly and arrive a day early. That is the cost of doing "their" business as opposed to doing the airlines' business. And so it should be.

That it is even controversial to state that commuting to work and then going on duty for, say, a twelve-hour day, is itself an interesting phenomenon. It comes down to a pilot's own sense of professionalism but even that is controversial to say and will likely garner 'comment' from those who commute and then go to work.

The key here is of course, balance. A three-hour drive from one's home to then going flying for a further fifteen hours isn't understood as commuting, while a 20-minute flight say, from Victoria to Vancouver is considered commuting? Why? The point is well taken and speaks to the need to define when one's duty day begins, and not the means by which one arrives at work.

Is getting up early on the west coast, commuting to the center of the universe and then doing a Europe or Caribbean flight wise? Legal? Not a problem? That it depends upon an individual answer and not a policy is part of the problem - no union and no regulator is going to touch this hot potato; first thing they would know is, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal would be hearing the case.

That the employer will exploit such union & pilot differences to portray fatigue as "a safety matter upon which even the pilots themselves are 'undecided'", while "fair game in love and war", is actually hypocritical and cynical and certainly does not resolve the issue or posit a workable solution for both parties.

Even as "fatigue as cause" is glacially working itself into accident reports as a contributing factor, if one knows one's business, including the regulator, one knows the effects of fatigue upon human performance in complex systems and resulting safety levels of crews and would be expected to legislate or make policy accordingly. The record thus far however, speaks for itself.