Pilot Napping - CNN
 

So the solution to pilot fatigue in the cockpit is to sleep in the cockpit. I love it!

That's just fantastic. Yet another useless knee-jerk reaction by the morons at the FAA to appease the morons in the public. What about all of us regional pilots that fly 7 or 8 leg days that we don't even have time to have a power nap? This is insanity at it's finest.

Works great for the long-haul guys, what about the rest of us in the trenches pushing 5+ legs per day? Much more fatiguing in my opinion.

If only NWA 188 had used that as an excuse, we would be seeing new regs asap....

I don't like this...it will enable ATA to push back on duty/rest limits..."but they can just sleep in the cockpit!"

You will have designated nap periods which will be deducted from your nightly rest and duty limits :rolleyes:

NASA Naps / Cruise Snooze studies happened ages ago.. This isn't new news.. plus its only supposed to be a short nap. 15 mins or so. If it actually comes through, it would help most of the regionals. Not the turbo prop super short flight guys.

Whatever it takes to keep GOV, Airline Management and USELESS FEDS busy with stupid ideas to justified there worthless jobs.

Instead of actually asking and working with THE PEOPLE THAT FLY THE D#@$ AIRPLANES!!!!!!!:mad:

It happened 20 yrs ago, it happens now and it will happened 20 from now. Money first and safety by a THIN TREAD...

Is that kind of like drinking to get rid of a hangover?

Guess I am in the minority that thinks it is a great idea? Y'all will always find something to complain about!!

From above 10k to TOD, I imagine you'd be able to find 15 minutes of peace on at least one of those 5 legs. Even without flying fatigued, I know there were times I would have benefited from it.

One of the best CRM statements I've heard is I better not wake up and catch you sleeping

I Think It Is Overdue
 

It is my understanding that this has been permitted under ICAO/JAR rules for a long time.

While I think it works best in three-man cockpits (one sleeps; two monitor and are alarm-clocks), which are almost as extinct as the pure-turbojet, I think it can work wonders in a two-seat cockpit.

Whether a pilot flies one leg a day or 7, airline schedules inevitably put one on the wrong side of their circadian rythm. When that happens, it doesn't matter how much caffiene you ingest...the only solution is sleep.

And while rest periods can be madated prior to flight, no FAR can force your body to cooperate and sleep when you tell it to.

Perhaps some retrofitted alarm--such as a cattle-prod, or recording fo your wife/lead flight attendant/cranky controller telling you to get your butt up after 15 minutes would be appropo.....

This is just a band-aid not a real solution. For those of you for this, I hope I don't hear you complaining about your extended duty day while your on your ninth or tenth leg.

I think controlled napping in the cockpit would help. When things like this becomes regulated I believe it can be safer. I have heard a few foreign airlines allow it. I'm all for it. Many studies have showed that people become more productive when they have a 20 min nap during the day.

Sounds like it could be beneficial. So long as they don't use it as bargaining to reduce our overall "sleep" on overnights. Rest is not "sleep".

To clarify, I do think that power naps are useful. But not if they are used to justify a schedule that was unsafe to begin with.

I agree they should change the rest rules AND allow naps. This would ensure pilots not being fatigued.

This will come down to the wording of the regulation. If management can find a loophole to take advantage of, I promise they will use it for as long as they can. They care about safety about as much as I care about their health.

I've gone a few months straight without even getting above 10,000 feet. We are scheduled up to 9 legs a day and most are around 20 minutes of flying time. Not much time to sit around and nap on those legs. We have more time to snooze on the ground waiting for rampers.

So let me get this right, you're a regional captain, working for one of the bottom regionals who has been hiring pilots with 200 hours. You're completely fatigued due to both the horrible schedules and the fact that you have to watch your FO like a hawk and constantly fix their mistakes and fill in for their huge gaps in knowledge and experience.

Now you're supposed to take a nap and while maintaining complete responsibility of the airplane and whatever bad happens, give sole operational control to this first officer? You wouldn't catch me sleeping in this situation even if I was allowed to. Many FOs at many regional airlines, the captains don't even trust enough to leave the cockpit for a 30 second run to the lav, much less a half hour long nap.

You wake up, the FO says "nothing changed. oh yeah and also they gave us this phone number to call, who knows why."

Yeah. Right.

Here's an idea...let's take a pilot COMPLETELY out of the loop...oh yea..he falls asleep for 15 minutes..what if the other one does too? Then we're at the same problem.

What if there's an emergency, and the newly awoken pilot now has to re-orient himself to an ever changing situation?

I'm sure the PF will be glad to give the PNF a full brief while he's trying to bring the airplane out of a dive because of rapid decompression.

The Canadians and Europeans have embraced the concept for certain flights without problem. I guess the question is, do you want people doing it in a controlled fashion or not ? Do you want them doing it in cruise under agreed conditions or suffering the consequences on an approach ?

Personally, I'm more interested to know when we can have a glass of wine with our evening in-flight meal like the French ?

Since many of us have to pay for and bring our own food, I've been determining the best wine to go with my Subway sandwiches. So far, a basic pinot grigio goes well with the turkey and a gentle syrah seems to compliment the black forest ham..................I'm still narrowing down my selection for the roast beef.

Do you think it would it be asking too much to ask for a shot of tequila with the chipotle chicken sandwich ?

:rolleyes:

Your pay will also be docked .4 for every 20min nap;)

On a different note Both Daimler Benz and PSA automotive group (Citroen/Peugeot) have designed snoozing detectors that follow and monitor eye movement. These systems warn the drivers by shaking the seats. I could see something similar being useful in a cockpit...

How many cruise emergencies are there compared to the number of incidents/accidents which are a result of fatigued crew members?

There are far too many cons for this. This is a piece of tape over a gaping wound that only sutures could fix.

ALPA has been proposing this....

I think the only possible con is the pilots who jumped at jobs at the XXXX airlines immediately caving on the number of legs and duty times in their contracts, requiring everyone else to follow suit or lose more flying to them because of cost.

Dont airlines allow pilots to leave the cockpit to have a bathroom break... and there your completely out of the loop... this would be similar except your in the cockpit just napping

and what would you propose?? its not helping the conversation by just saying 'no that wont work' add some insight and then people would take you seriously

That's easy, update the duty regs! I'd be ok with naps in the cockpit so long as the naps are not used against us. IE, getting even more grief for calling in fatigued, or extending our already long duty day.

Did ANYONE notice whom was pushing this in the video? It was the RAA. What do you think? I refuse to believe the regional airline association has had a change of heart and now actually cares about anything outside of the regionals coffers. They're pushing this through so they can say "hey, now we don't need to reduce the duty limits!"

if anyone recalls how the RAA behaved and what came out of their mouths during the congressional hearings this past summer, I think you'll remember that they pretty much lied / twisted the truth and made sure the committee thought everything was hunky dorey in our training, fatigue, pay and general status of the regional industry.

The RAA has budgets and bottom lines in mind as they try and lobby for this. They dont give a hoot about whether it's actually going to improve anything. A reduced duty day would cost the regionals tons of cash since it would severely affect staffing levels. These people are not on our side at all!

That's right people...the RAA want's this. You know why? So they can attack the proposed duty time limitations. Their senseless rhetoric will consist of something along the lines of...

"Flight crews no longer need to call in fatigued and do not need any more then 9 hours of rest because they can take a power nap on each leg."

"We have proof of this...take a look at this 20 year old NASA study"

Wake up people. The RAA is not here to help US! Don't let that camels nose in the tent.

The only way we should agree to this is if it does not water down the new proposed duty time and rest requirements. If that is the case, I'm all for it.

PS: Every time I think of the RAA, I think of the movie SAW. I would love Jigsaw to make them "see as I see"

I think your minority may actually be a majority. I'm in agreement with you. I've heard ;) that a little nap on a long hard day will actually keep the crew fresh late into the day. You're spot on with your other observation as well. What a tough brutal life all of us poor pilots lead.:rolleyes:

I forsee this only going bad for us as Chip says; This information will spur the RAA to try and help out the one's their truly working for....

Not sure why anybody is giving the RAA any credance at all on this issue. The NASA study was on long haul trans and inter-con flights... To take the NASA study out of context and apply it to 2 hour legs or less is a jackass maneuver.... Perhaps that explains why it was on CNN. If you can't stay awake for two hours, do the rest of us a favor and call fatigued.... and would the newbies please stop yawning over the radio while talking to ATC....

I think the real underlying problem here is that every incident or accident we have nowadays brings an onslaught of knee jerk reactions and rules from the FAA, Congress, the media and the public. Here is a situation where ONE crew messed up and there is this overwhelming pressure to make sure this one specific, isolated, minor incident never happens again. Whatever happened to just blaming the pilots :cool:

This is not a "knee-jerk reaction". NASA did the study years ago, and by all accounts the data suggests that short naps improve pilot performance. We're talking about a 10-20 minute nap in cruise while the other pilot is monitoring and an alarm is set. This could be done with a kitchen timer.

It's a safety issue. For the price of a kitchen timer safety could be significantly improved. It doesn't mean that new duty time rules aren't required, but it would supplement them. No matter how the rules are changed there will be times when a short nap would be beneficial. I would like to have a procedure where I could take a nap legally in order to improve performance.

As a side note, this is not a case were a little is good and more is better. Once you enter the REM phase of sleep it is much more difficult to awaken and you will not feel as rested. All of us has experienced this at one time or another when we fall asleep for 45 minutes or an hour and have to wake up. You may feel disoriented and it takes a long time to feel rested, this would not be good and is why it's important to put an alarm in the cockpit.

Kitchen timer? Can you imagine what an FAA approved kitchen timer is gonna cost?

How about something cheaper than a kitchen timer, do you know how much that will cost the airlines? Into the billions. Why not just make the FAs check on us every 15 minutes or when the nap time is over? Both times with these sleeping issues the FAs were the ones to "awaken" the pilots.

raa and cohen are straight up ***hole morons