Dangerous fatigue: 24% of European pilots go to work exhausted

Nearly a quarter of civil aviation pilots in Europe admit to going to work even when they feel tired. It's from sb.by.

The Guardian, citing an industry survey by the European Pilots Association (ECA), found that 24% of respondents admitted to taking a flight instead of telling their employer they were unable to continue working due to fatigue. Only about a third of respondents said they would recuse themselves from a flight in such situations. Half of the pilots surveyed said they feared negative consequences at work if they officially notified the management of fatigue. Only 11.9 percent of them trust how the pilot fatigue tracking system works.

It is also indicated that 75% of pilots said that in the last four weeks before the survey they had an episode of microsleep while flying the aircraft (microsleep is a short-term – up to several seconds – sleep that can occur unintentionally in a person for various reasons, including fatigue and lack of sleep). The publication indicated that pilots of civil aviation often face the problem of exhaustion, because they have to work on an unstable schedule and make flights across several time zones, which negatively affects the natural cycle of sleep and wakefulness.

The survey found differences between individual countries. For example, in Ireland and France, the proportion of pilots who get tired on a flight reaches a third. In the UK, their share is 10%. ECA President Tanya Harter urged airlines, national and European regulators to take matters into their own hands

- We cannot wait another three years to see that nothing has changed.

The ECA survey was organised on Aug. It was attended by 7.2 thousand pilots of European airlines. Data on the error was not disclosed. In Bulgaria, a small-engine plane crashed, the pilot died

In the US state of Wisconsin in the crash of the plane killed six people