Have you ever looked out of the window into the pouring rain and thought to yourself: "Ouch, what a nasty day, let’s bring a measuring cup and a towel"? The cup for measuring how much rain hits you, and the towel to try to fix some of the consequences afterwards? Right..., we didn’t think you have.
Yet, there are still operators acting this way when it comes to fatigue risk management. They use a bio-mathematical model (the measuring cup) to quantify crew fatigue risk after the complex and time critical crew planning has concluded. They then manually tear up and re-work (the towel) the planning results into something that is (hopefully) slightly better. It’s a sad, slow, and often chilling experience. But perhaps this way of acting partly lies in our nature? Many of us love fulfilling a role as the 'expert' and the 'great problem solver’ pointing out issues in hindsight, being the one to come up with dry towels. But honestly, isn’t it better to just solve the problem at the cause and avoid getting wet in the first place?
Already back in 2011, Finnair showed the way by becoming the first airline to actively reduce and avoid crew fatigue risk as an integrated part of the crew planning process. The way they went about it was to let a bio-mathematical model influence the planning optimizers away from risk (an umbrella if you like), while simultaneously solving all other aspects of the planning problem. And the result was a shorter process, lower fatigue risk and much lower cost (from tearing up optimized plans).
This type of approach puts extreme demands on a fatigue model regarding performance, as there could be a need of predicting fatigue for several thousand crew schedules each second, over many hours. The Boeing Alertness Model, BAM, is uniquely designed from the onset to function in this real-time environment. You can read more about how that is achieved in this document. Today, this integrated planning approach has become the yardstick for the industry, and more than fifty operators now rely on BAM for their FRMS.
Is this a good time to consider holding your operation to a higher standard, staying 'warm and cosy'? You are welcome to contact us here for a demo or a quotation.
Comments