Thread: Falling asleep behind the wheel

There was a recent voluntary survey of aircrew about fatigue. Turns out over 50% of the aircrew who responded had fallen asleep in the cockpit. Over 20% had woken up to find the other pilot asleep too. Fatigue is an insidious thing and many of the airlines are paying lip service to it in the name of profit. Most airline crew rest periods don't include travel time to and from the airport or even include pre-flight checks. At the end of a monthly cycle, many pilots are flying so tired they may as well be drunk. There have been several aviation enquiries highlighting how dangerous it is, but airlines have been dragging their feet and doing the least amount possible to keep profits high. This was a great article....

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjourn....html?page=all

And this was an interesting thread!
Things Your Pilot Isn't Telling You.

Originally Posted by cripesamighty

There was a recent voluntary survey of aircrew about fatigue. Turns out over 50% of the aircrew who responded had fallen asleep in the cockpit. Over 20% had woken up to find the other pilot asleep too. Fatigue is an insidious thing and many of the airlines are paying lip service to it in the name of profit. Most airline crew rest periods don't include travel time to and from the airport or even include pre-flight checks. At the end of a monthly cycle, many pilots are flying so tired they may as well be drunk. There have been several aviation enquiries highlighting how dangerous it is, but airlines have been dragging their feet and doing the least amount possible to keep profits high. This was a great article....

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjourn....html?page=all

And this was an interesting thread!
Things Your Pilot Isn't Telling You.

You had to come up with this I am a nervous flyer at the best of times.

Originally Posted by Roverlord off road spares

You had to come up with this I am a nervous flyer at the best of times.

flying is very safe.
we've never lost anyone up there.... what goes up must come down.
except that MH370 flight.

Unfortunately, talking about keeping profits high is to gloss over the fact that most of the world's airlines actually operate at a loss, relying on either subsidies or creative accounting to survive. From time to time a few airlines manage to actually make a real profit, but this is usually only for a short period, and hardly compensates shareholders for the years of losses.

Of course, this does not excuse dangerous practices, such as the fatigue issue noted, but any discussion on how to deal with this is devalued by the assumprion that airlines are highly profitable businesses. They are not, and most of the time most airlines are in survival mode, which is not a good start to safety improvements!

And no, I don't have answers, but saying that the airtlines are highly profitable is not an answer either. (And I don't have any airline shares - I have more sense!)

You are definitely right John. They used to be more profitable, before de-regulation that is, but that's another story. See below for an overview. The guy pushing the hardest for de-regulating the aviation industry his way, (economist Alfred Kahn) came out more than 30 years later and privately apologised to his biggest detractors and admitted they had been right. Initially he knew nothing about aviation, and assumed it worked like any other industry before eventually seeing his implementation did more harm than good. Too little, too late buddy...

Airline Deregulation: A Triumph of Ideology Over Evidence | HuffPost

An article written 15 or so years after de-regulation showing major problems already
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a276761.pdf

So you can be "done" for drink and drug driving , what is the measure for fatigue ? There should be something more than an ambivalent stop every two hours, and where do employer schedules or private contractors fit in to achieve the outcomes but protect the drivers and public?

Originally Posted by cripesamighty

You are definitely right John. They used to be more profitable, before de-regulation that is, but that's another story. ....

The regulation that was deregulated was simply another way of arranging a subsidy, and deregulation only applied to domestic airlines anyway, although the international scene has become less regulated and subsidised than it used to be. International air travel is still dominated by national carriers that are government owned, explicitly subsidised or have restricted competition.

If you change one thing, something else has to give. Those subsidies had unfortunate consequences which were not anticipated (at least not by those who were pushing for it). Look at the QANTAS board for instance who are out of touch for the most part. They and the poison dwarf in charge have done serious damage to the brand (both Jetstar and QANTAS) by some quite stupid decisions (both locally and on international routes), especially since de-regulation. The industry certainly needs a shake-up, but I don't think it will be getting it anytime soon.