Pilot fatigue has been identified as a determinative factor in various safety events, leading to the introduction of Fatigue Risk Management regulations and standards worldwide. The scope of this study was to examine whether event and pilot characteristics recorded in safety investigation reports were associated with fatigue when the latter was stated as a contributing/causal factor. The sample consisted of 296 reports published by various investigation authorities and referred to safety events occurred between 1990 and 2014. The researchers conducted frequency analyses and Chi-square / Fisher Exact tests as a means to examine possible associations. Flight crew fatigue was found as a cause in 8.8% of the reports and was more frequently present in occurrences during evening and night operations, take-off, climbing, approach and landing phases, and Control Flight into Terrain and Runway Excursion eventualities. No significant differences were found regarding the year of occurrence, aircraft age, weight and type (jet, propeller, rotary), flight type (Commercial Air Transport and other), operation type (passenger and non-passenger) and event severity. Regarding the pilot characteristics, the more the hours on duty the higher the frequency of events where fatigue was recognised as a factor. No association was detected between the frequency of fatigue related events and pilots’ age, hours of experience in the respective aircraft type and in total, and, surprisingly, regarding sleeping and resting hours before reporting for duty. The findings only partially confirmed associations of fatigue with the operational, event, aircraft and flight crew characteristics included in this study, and showed that fatigue had contributed to (serious) incidents and accidents with about the same frequency. The results suggest a consideration of quality of flight crew sleep/rest before reporting on duty.
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Purpose: To study the association between fatigue and participation and QoL after acquired brain injury (ABI) in adolescents and young adults (AYAs). Materials & Methods: Cross-sectional study with AYAs aged 14–25 years, diagnosed with ABI. The PedsQL™ Multidimensional Fatigue Scale, Child & Adolescent Scale of Participation, and PedsQL™4.0 Generic Core Scales were administered. Results: Sixty-four AYAs participated in the study, 47 with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Median age at admission was 17.6 yrs, 0.8 yrs since injury. High levels of fatigue (median 44.4 (IQR 34.7, 59.7)), limited participation (median 82.5 (IQR 68.8, 92.3)), and diminished QoL (median 63.0 (IQR 47.8, 78.3)) were reported. More fatigue was significantly associated with more participation restrictions (β 0.64, 95%CI 0.44, 0.85) and diminished QoL (β 0.87, 95%CI 0.72, 1.02). Conclusions: AYAs with ABI reported high levels of fatigue, limited participation and diminished quality of life with a significant association between fatigue and both participation and QoL. Targeting fatigue in rehabilitation treatment could potentially improve participation and QoL.
MULTIFILE
Fatigued pilots are prone to experience cognitive disorders that degrade their performance and adherence to high safety standards. In light of the current challenging context in aviation, we report the early phase of our ongoing project on the re-evaluation of human factors research for flight crew. Our motivation stems from the need for aviation organisations to develop decision support systems for operational aviation settings, able to feed-in in the organisations’ fatigue risk management efforts. Key criteria to this end are the need for the least possible intrusiveness and the added information value for a safety system. Departing from the problems in compliance-focused fatigue risk management and the intrusive nature of clinical studies, we report a neuroscientific methodology able to yield markers that can be easily integrated in a decision support system at the operational level. Reporting the preliminary phase of our live project, we evaluate the tools suitable for the development of a system that tracks subtle pilot states, such as drowsiness and micro-sleep episodes.
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