Originally Posted by EdGrimley

When you distill down the hundreds of sleep studies there emerges some baseline requirements to be adequately rested to perform duties of a technical or safety related nature:

1. On average, a human being needs 8 uninterrupted hours of actual sleep per day. Some individuals, due to their body mechanics, hormones, etc require closer to 9. Some can get by with slightly less than 8. On average, 8 is the number. This amount of time excludes the time to get ready for bed, calm the mind from the days activities and shut down.

2. The time of day of the sleep is not as important as the fact it is consistent. Shift workers pulling nights do OK as long as they work and sleep the same time every day. One caveat, if sleeping during the day it is important to make the room quiet and pitch black as possible. Daylight (5000 plus Kelvin on the color chart or higher) or Tungsten light (3200 K...most household lighting) immediately shuts down melatonin production, an important element of the restorative sleep cycle.

With these in mind, and trying to forget how the 117 fatigue rules were hijacked by powerful lobbyists and a weak, overly agreeable union, we should now be working at Delta Air Lines to improve safety by "scheduling with safety". This will improve health and safety. It might reduce corporate profits by 1% but if the company and the union are serious about safety (SD always talks about it being the number one priority and the union says it is committed to safety) then we should work to fashion trips that implement these two important rules to restorative sleep above. Again, 8 hours of continuous sleep the same time each day of a trip where possible. Also, hotels need to be construction free, quiet and able to shut down all light in the room.

How about some constructive engagement outside of contract negotiations to do the right thing because it promotes safety and safety isn't just words we use to hide behind if something goes wrong?

One other thing, let's not use the fact that some ops (ie international flying) will be harder (but not impossible) to improve as an excuse to not address any and all flying that can be. Further, lets never use the fact that some operations currently break the rules of fatigue mitigation to justify adding more.