Flight and duty time limits from the regulators are known to be blunt instruments in limiting fatigue risk in crew rosters. It is of course difficult to limit such a complex effect as roster-indiced crew fatigue, by only limiting work. A better strategy would likely be to promote sleep by having stronger requirements for regular access to good sleeping facilities, for a minimum duration, aligned with the physiological needs of the crew. But we are not there yet.
But surely, you may think, rules like 'maximum duty hours over a seven day period' must provide some protection against fatigue risk building up over time? Well, it turns out that for some operations rules like that may be pointless. As long as there is good sleep opportunity provided between duty days, well aligned with physiological needs, the long-term effects from number of operated duty hours, or number of sectors number of sectors for that matter, may be non-existent.
Read more about this in a recently published paper in the Journal of Sleep Research; Acute and cumulative effects of scheduling on aircrew fatigue in ultra‐short‐haul operations. The paper is 'open access', available through this link.
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