The existing system for managing pilot fatigue - national regulations on flight time limitations (FTL) - is about to be superseded at a International Civil Aviation Organisation level by a requirement for operators to run a fatigue risk management system (FRMS).
These latest updates on fatigue management thinking and action emerged at a 2-3 October workshop organised by the Association Luxembourgeoise des Pilotes de Ligne in Luxembourg, attended by experts from the European Aviation Safety Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and fatigue research specialists from Australia among others.
Herbert Meyer, the air operations manager from EASA's rulemaking directorate, said Europe is proposing to mandate the FRMS, using a model effectively based on the system developed over the past six years by EasyJet working with specialists at the UK Civil Aviation Authority. This will almost certainly make Europe the first world region to adopt the FRMS as the default method of managing fatigue risk. At least 10 serious fatal accidents to commercial operations since 1993 have been judged to have been caused by pilot fatigue.
Meanwhile new ICAO requirements will specify that - in addition to the requirement for states to have an approved, scientifically based FTL regulation as the fundamental defence against fatigue - operators will also have to have an FRMS that relates to their particular operation.
Dr Paul Jackson, a fatigue scientist from Australia-based Clockwork Research, said that FRMS is not just an addition to an FTL regime, but ideally it should replace it, because a single set of national FTLs can never be appropriate for all types of operation. EasyJet's Capt Simon Stewart, who is on the ICAO's FRMS subcommittee and oversees the system at his airline, says FRMS is a system that suits EasyJet because "we are looking for optimisation and efficiency wherever we can find it".
Stewart reported at the Luxembourg meeting that the ICAO air navigation committee has recognised the FRMS as "a mature concept" and believes that it should become integral to all operators' safety management system. He predicts that it will rule on the standards in about a month.
Stewart says that it is essential, if an airline is to make an FRMS work, that the airline runs a "just culture" safety reporting and management system, and that individuals as well as the company take responsibility for their own actions. EasyJet contracts require pilots to live within 1.5h of their base airport. It is also pilots' responsibility to arrive fit for duty or to report if they are not. The change in emphasis from FTLs to FRMS will also make it clear that operators take the responsibility for safety risks brought about by crew fatigue. They cannot defer that risk to the regulator.
Source: Flight International
