Emirates Denies Flight Fatigue
Ryan Boyd March 25, 2016
Emirates has publicly rejected recent allegations of an epidemic of pilots suffering from flight fatigue. Accusations against FlyDubai were made by anonymous Emirates pilots on the heels of the crash in Rostov-on-Don last week, and possible fatigue of the flight crew was proposed as a factor for the accident that resulted in the death of 62 people aboard the flight. A spokesperson for Emirates said in a statement that “Emirates strictly adheres to the state-approved flight time limitations (FTL) scheme. We never compromise safety and always operate within the legal regulatory requirements with regard to flying times, operating hours, and layover times in between flights for our pilots,” and that they “regularly require all pilots to undergo medical assessments, covering both physical and psychological aspects, as part of their medical renewal process.”
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[Photo: Emirates]
I worked for Emirates as a pilot for over 10 years. It was a great job for me and I left on good terms. That said, the flight duties there are fatiguing especially on a cumulative basis. A pilot is constantly flying through the middle of the night because that is the nature of international flying. When I joined the airline a pilot would normally fly 70 hours per month. To understand that is important. 70 fight hours is just the flight time. To get 70 hours of flight time would take around 140 duty hours. That level allowed adequate time to recuperate from the constant night flying and time zone changes. It was a great lifestyle and a great job back then. Today a normal Emirates pilot will fly 100 hours per month, so that would be closer to 200 hours of duty time in the month with constant changes of time zones and numerous night duties. At that level it is virtually impossible to recover and the fatigue rises to a level that it literally kills pilots. A well liked 53 year old Canadian captain dropped dead of a heart attack in New York while on a layover last year. He had recently been complaining about fatigue. To add to the problem Emirates used to give pilots 42 days of vacation per year, which is inline with the European standard. Today a pilot is lucky to get his full allotment and often times it is given in lieu of days off. When a pilot at Emirates takes his vacation, let's says 14 days all in the same month. He would still be scheduled to fly almost a full month's work in the remaining 14 days. Imagine if you were a 9-5 office worker and you took one week of vacation. When you return your boss requires you to work 16 hours per day to make up for it. That is how Emirates treat use of vacation by pilots today. That just adds even more to the fatigue issue.