GateHold
Oct 29, 09, 8:26 pm
This week in Patrick Smith's ASK THE PILOT column at Salon.com:
BOREDOM AND FATIGUE AT 35,000 FEET
-- A look at the recent Northwest Airlines incident
-- How do pilots deal with boredom and fatigue, and what can the FAA do about it?
-- Plus, facts and fallacies of cockpit automation
"…Do airline pilots sometimes become distracted? Of course they do, just as any professional in any line of work occasionally becomes distracted, even in the middle of important duties. There is no such thing as a perfect flight; pilots make minor mistakes just like anybody else. But this was something different. Just the same, I am more than a bit dismayed by the intense media focus on this story. It was a comparatively minor event that has received far more attention than it deserves. Reporters and pundits have been digging and digging for some nonexistent deeper meaning, asking if perhaps the event was a symptom of a frightening breakdown in air safety. It was what it was: a freak event….
"… Boredom and automation have little to do with one another. Boredom was a factor 60 years ago when planes had rudimentary autopilots and propellers spun by pistons. It's going to be a factor in * any * profession where the bulk of tasks become repetitive and routine. We don't know exactly what happened over Minneapolis, but the fancy electronics of the Airbus A320 weren't the problem, trust me. I operate eight, nine, even twelve-hour nonstops all the time. There's a certain tedium that I expect and have to deal with. If I had to have my hands on the wheel that whole time, I'd be twice as bored and ten times as exhausted. And on the whole, Minneapolis notwithstanding, pilots are pretty good at the kind of self-discipline it requires to be alert for long periods of low workload. It's part of their job.
"…Contrary to what people think, both boredom and fatigue can be easier to manage on long-haul flights than on shorter ones. Most flights over eight hours long carry augmented crews, allowing pilots to take organized rest breaks in a bunk room or designated crew seat. On a 12-hour nonstop from New York to Tel Aviv, a pilot will spend spend no more than three or four consecutive hours at a control seat, versus six hours on a trip between New York and San Francisco. And the cockpit can be a busier place than you might imagine, even late at night over the middle of the ocean: There are ATC and company position reports to transmit and record, weather reports to check, arrival procedures to review and plan, aircraft systems to monitor, logbook issues to take care of, and so forth.
"…On Wednesday, CNN ran a story by Jim Kavanaugh about pilots becoming bored. It included the following: "An airliner's entire flight can be programmed; once that program is activated, the plane will fly to its destination without any input from the pilot at all."
When I read that, I thought my head was going to explode. Rarely have I come across more misleading a statement in the mainstream media when it comes to flying. This is arguably the most grotesque caricature of cockpit automation I have ever encountered, and any pilot who reads this ought to be fuming. A jetliner can take itself laterally from waypoint to waypoint along a pre-programmed route. But he idea that a jet “...will fly to its destination without any input from the pilot at all” is absolutely preposterous and downright offensive to anybody who flies for a living. There are so many myths out there when it comes to cockpit automation, and pilots are often their own worst enemies, grossly oversimplifying things in an eagerness to boast of the various technologies at their disposal. I've said it before and I will say it again: automation helps a pilot in the same way that it helps a surgeon. It makes flying easier, but it does not make it * easy. * Even the most routine and "automated" flight remains subject to countless contingencies and a tremendous amount of input from the crew. Yes, tremendous.
"….Meanwhile, not everybody is buying the laptop excuse, theorizing instead that both the captain and first officer had fallen asleep. Thus, whatever the actual cause or causes, the incident has ignited a conversation about the problem of pilot fatigue, similar to what transpired in the aftermath of a Colgan Air crash near Buffalo last February. Unlike other aspects of this story, this is a conversation worth having....
But what's ironic about Minneapolis is that it involved a major carrier. Contrary to conventional wisdom, fatigue is considerable more prevalent as the commuter and regional airline level than at the majors. Everybody's physiology is different, but my own experiences bear this out: I have flown intercontinental long-haul, domestic mainline, back-of-the-clock cargo and short-haul regional. It's intuitive, I suppose, to associate long-haul flying with fatigue, but in many ways it's the easiest form of flying out there. Indeed the circadian scramble of a 10, 12, or 15-hour nonstop is something to reckon with, but these flights carry augmented crews with organized rest breaks; layovers are long and comfortable, the workload comparatively light. In the regional theater, on the other hand, pilots fly multiple daily legs in and out of busy airports, into the teeth of bad weather and heavy traffic, making quick turnarounds and/or sitting out long delays. After eight or nine hours at the Holiday Inn Express, it's time to do it all again.
"...The most productive step regulators can take is adjusting the definition of what it considers “rest.” As it stands today, a pilot is considered off duty and on “rest,” anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after his final flight of the day shuts down at the gate. With paperwork and other duties to attend to, the pilot's rest clock often begins ticking while he is still at the airport -- sometimes still on the plane! And, the next morning, it ends not in the hotel lobby, but back at the airport at the moment of sign-in. Once you account for transit time to and from the hotel, time for eating, etc., what exists on paper as a ten-hour rest period might only include five or six hours of actual sleep. In fairness to a pilot and his passengers, the rest clock should not begin to tick until the minute he latches the door of his hotel room, and stop ticking no later than the minute he checks out…."
The full article is available here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/10/29/askthepilot339
Entry to Salon.com is free.
Recently in ASK THE PILOT: Proper etiquette during an emergency evacuation?
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/10/09/askthepilot337/
BOREDOM AND FATIGUE AT 35,000 FEET
-- A look at the recent Northwest Airlines incident
-- How do pilots deal with boredom and fatigue, and what can the FAA do about it?
-- Plus, facts and fallacies of cockpit automation
"…Do airline pilots sometimes become distracted? Of course they do, just as any professional in any line of work occasionally becomes distracted, even in the middle of important duties. There is no such thing as a perfect flight; pilots make minor mistakes just like anybody else. But this was something different. Just the same, I am more than a bit dismayed by the intense media focus on this story. It was a comparatively minor event that has received far more attention than it deserves. Reporters and pundits have been digging and digging for some nonexistent deeper meaning, asking if perhaps the event was a symptom of a frightening breakdown in air safety. It was what it was: a freak event….
"… Boredom and automation have little to do with one another. Boredom was a factor 60 years ago when planes had rudimentary autopilots and propellers spun by pistons. It's going to be a factor in * any * profession where the bulk of tasks become repetitive and routine. We don't know exactly what happened over Minneapolis, but the fancy electronics of the Airbus A320 weren't the problem, trust me. I operate eight, nine, even twelve-hour nonstops all the time. There's a certain tedium that I expect and have to deal with. If I had to have my hands on the wheel that whole time, I'd be twice as bored and ten times as exhausted. And on the whole, Minneapolis notwithstanding, pilots are pretty good at the kind of self-discipline it requires to be alert for long periods of low workload. It's part of their job.
"…Contrary to what people think, both boredom and fatigue can be easier to manage on long-haul flights than on shorter ones. Most flights over eight hours long carry augmented crews, allowing pilots to take organized rest breaks in a bunk room or designated crew seat. On a 12-hour nonstop from New York to Tel Aviv, a pilot will spend spend no more than three or four consecutive hours at a control seat, versus six hours on a trip between New York and San Francisco. And the cockpit can be a busier place than you might imagine, even late at night over the middle of the ocean: There are ATC and company position reports to transmit and record, weather reports to check, arrival procedures to review and plan, aircraft systems to monitor, logbook issues to take care of, and so forth.
"…On Wednesday, CNN ran a story by Jim Kavanaugh about pilots becoming bored. It included the following: "An airliner's entire flight can be programmed; once that program is activated, the plane will fly to its destination without any input from the pilot at all."
When I read that, I thought my head was going to explode. Rarely have I come across more misleading a statement in the mainstream media when it comes to flying. This is arguably the most grotesque caricature of cockpit automation I have ever encountered, and any pilot who reads this ought to be fuming. A jetliner can take itself laterally from waypoint to waypoint along a pre-programmed route. But he idea that a jet “...will fly to its destination without any input from the pilot at all” is absolutely preposterous and downright offensive to anybody who flies for a living. There are so many myths out there when it comes to cockpit automation, and pilots are often their own worst enemies, grossly oversimplifying things in an eagerness to boast of the various technologies at their disposal. I've said it before and I will say it again: automation helps a pilot in the same way that it helps a surgeon. It makes flying easier, but it does not make it * easy. * Even the most routine and "automated" flight remains subject to countless contingencies and a tremendous amount of input from the crew. Yes, tremendous.
"….Meanwhile, not everybody is buying the laptop excuse, theorizing instead that both the captain and first officer had fallen asleep. Thus, whatever the actual cause or causes, the incident has ignited a conversation about the problem of pilot fatigue, similar to what transpired in the aftermath of a Colgan Air crash near Buffalo last February. Unlike other aspects of this story, this is a conversation worth having....
But what's ironic about Minneapolis is that it involved a major carrier. Contrary to conventional wisdom, fatigue is considerable more prevalent as the commuter and regional airline level than at the majors. Everybody's physiology is different, but my own experiences bear this out: I have flown intercontinental long-haul, domestic mainline, back-of-the-clock cargo and short-haul regional. It's intuitive, I suppose, to associate long-haul flying with fatigue, but in many ways it's the easiest form of flying out there. Indeed the circadian scramble of a 10, 12, or 15-hour nonstop is something to reckon with, but these flights carry augmented crews with organized rest breaks; layovers are long and comfortable, the workload comparatively light. In the regional theater, on the other hand, pilots fly multiple daily legs in and out of busy airports, into the teeth of bad weather and heavy traffic, making quick turnarounds and/or sitting out long delays. After eight or nine hours at the Holiday Inn Express, it's time to do it all again.
"...The most productive step regulators can take is adjusting the definition of what it considers “rest.” As it stands today, a pilot is considered off duty and on “rest,” anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after his final flight of the day shuts down at the gate. With paperwork and other duties to attend to, the pilot's rest clock often begins ticking while he is still at the airport -- sometimes still on the plane! And, the next morning, it ends not in the hotel lobby, but back at the airport at the moment of sign-in. Once you account for transit time to and from the hotel, time for eating, etc., what exists on paper as a ten-hour rest period might only include five or six hours of actual sleep. In fairness to a pilot and his passengers, the rest clock should not begin to tick until the minute he latches the door of his hotel room, and stop ticking no later than the minute he checks out…."
The full article is available here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/10/29/askthepilot339
Entry to Salon.com is free.
Recently in ASK THE PILOT: Proper etiquette during an emergency evacuation?
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2009/10/09/askthepilot337/