Defining meaningful safety performance indicators for fatigue risk in the crew management process is far from easy. The available metrics are typically block and duty hours developed for governing and producing legal and efficient rosters. Productivity numbers, monthly block hours and even ’distance’ to regulatory limits explains very little, if anything, about an operators fatigue risk exposure. Fatigue reports do, but they are reactive and often ’few and far between’.
A typical operator has a lot of KPIs available that reflect the overall performance of the crew scheduling process, as well as metrics for each crew. Examples include productivity, block hours per month etc. Unfortunately, very few of these are suitable as SPIs within the context of a FRMS. What is really needed are metrics reflecting the immediate context leading into the flights. Think about it: the fatigue associated with an individual flight is not necessarily worse because of 90 block hours that month, compared to just 80.
Next time you look at defining good SPIs - take a look at this document explaining the rationale behind 'ACPIs': Alertness Centric Performance Indicators. We think you will find them much more meaningful.