This paper records the lived reality of night‐freight operations at a UK‐registered airline. Observations were made over an 18‐month period. The paper answers calls for more research into the working and living conditions of night‐freight pilots. Pilots perceived numerous issues. These included cultural cleavage, terms and conditions, roster instability and the impact of night flying on physical and psychological health. Some issues (volatile rosters and deep first nights, for example) had the potential to increase operational risk. Two sub‐cultures were identified within the airline: the quality‐of‐working‐life sub‐culture and competitiveness and corporate survival sub‐culture. A ‘paradox of control’ was observed. While pilots controlled the aircraft in flight, their patterns and conditions of work were decided by roster managers, crewing officers and other office‐based technocrats. Technocrats’ directive power was resented by some pilots. Some claimed that technocrats did not understand the lived realit...

A longitudinal ethnographic study of night‐freight pilots

Untersuchungen zu kumulativen psychischen und physiologischen Effekten des fliegenden Personals auf der Kurzstrecke Am Beispiel des Flugbetriebes der Boeing 737 Flotte der

Fatigue has been identified as a leading contributor to incidents and accidents within high-risk industries, in particular, the aviation sector. Traditional approaches used to mitigate fatigue, predominantly for air traffic controllers and flight crew, have largely focused on duty time limitations. FRMS is a data-driven means of continuously monitoring and managing fatigue-related safety risks, based on scientific principles and knowledge as well as operational experience, which aim to ensure relevant personnel are performing at adequate levels of alertness. It allows operators to adapt policies, procedures and practices to the specific conditions that create fatigue in a particular aviation setting. The ages of 36 participants in this study were from 23 years to 58 years old. The results demonstrated that ATCO’s alertness indicate as functioning at a high level of alertness between 9 am and 5 pm during working hours. ATCOs’ alertness levels deteriorated between working day-1 to day-5. Furthermore, there are significant differences over the 8 working hours per day among 5 working days. Particularly, the 6th, 7th and 8th working hours demonstrate much worsened alertness on day-4 and day-5. The pro-active approach of FRMS is to increase ATCOs fatigue resilience to cope with demanding situations while ATCOs are on position and while resting on breaks. FRMS is data driven, and data is collected from the operation, fatigue management decisions are made against this data, and the measurements that are required can be identified and implemented to improve the safety of operations.

Tanja Niederl

Papers

Consensus report prepared by ECASS: Scientific and medical evaluation of flight time limitations. Gutachten für EASA

Untersuchungen zu kumulativen psychophysiologischen Effekten beim fliegenden Personal auf der Kurzstrecke