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  • FRM Info

Risk of getting a fatigue report, or risk of having an accident?


Risk management is about dealing with probabilities, hazards, unwanted consequences, and barriers. The ultimate unwanted consequence we try to avoid is crew fatigue being a contributing factor to an accident. It’s good to be reminded of that now and then. It is not the risk of getting another fatigue report.

Imagine two flights: A and B. The crew on flight A performs a daytime landing at home base and are predicted (by a bio-mathematical model) to be at KSS 7.5 at top of descent. The fatigue model predicts, let's say, that the pilots have been ‘low’ on alertness for many hours during this weekly flight and there’s also quite a few fatigue reports. The crew operating the daily flight B on the other hand, which is a much shorter flight, predicts at KSS 7.4 (slightly better) but the crew performs night landings with a difficult approach into Nice.

Now, when it comes to crew scheduling, the phase during which it is decided what other flights and activities precede these two flights, should we put more focus on improving the context for flight A or flight B? Are you addressing fatigue risk effectively today?

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