ATC report leaked

[docmirror]

I guess asking for it for a few years by the FOIA didn't quite get it.

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-...hows-chronic-fatigue-162741161--politics.html

Interesting, wish they would have linked the actual report.

 

[RJM62]

There are millions of people doing shift work in the private sector. You'd think the FAA would have it figured out by now.

Rich

 

[EppyGA]

There are millions of people doing shift work in the private sector. You'd think the FAA would have it figured out by now.

Rich

Under the same kinds of stresses though?

 

[vintage cessna]

There are millions of people doing shift work in the private sector. You'd think the FAA would have it figured out by now.

Rich

It has been known for a long time that the shift schedule that controllers work is the worst possible, for alertness and health.

But it is what the workforce wants, so the FAA gives it to them.

 

[Velocity173]

You're always going to have this problem at the 24 hr facilities. Trying to prepare for a mid shift when your circadian rhythm doesn't jive with that is going to be fatiguing over time. Combine that with understaffing and you have a situation where controllers aren't getting enough sleep and they're overworked. Only way to overcome this is the FAA hiring more controllers and getting rid of the mid shift. Good luck with that one.

Simple fact is, when you're operating in the middle of the night and you haven't adjusted your sleep schedule to compensate, you're gonna be tired and you're gonna make mistakes. Same thing we deal with in EMS. I was reading some scientific sleep study article the other day as it applies to aviation operations. What stuck me the most what the statement about having an interruption in sleep in the middle of the night. Said if your sleep is interrupted, it's takes approximately 20 minutes to really wake up and be alert. So basically around the time I'm landing on a road, I'm just starting to gain alertness. Awesome. Probably has something to do with our safety record being far worse at night than day.

FAA knows about the problems with proper sleep and there's nothing they really can do about it. The individual can do their best to prepare for that shift but when you're doing shift work at all times day and night, you can only do so much. You deal with the fact that you're not 100 % and you push on.

 

[RJM62]

Under the same kinds of stresses though?

In most cases, no. But the stress level is another issue from the scheduling.

When I worked graveyard shift, I worked it five days a week for the length of the three-month bid. I think variants of this are the most common arrangement in the private sector. "Compressing" five shifts into four days by shortening the time between shifts is something I've never heard of before. It makes zero sense in view of the 24-hour circadian rhythm.

Even four-day work weeks usually consist of four 10-hour shifts at fixed times, not "compressed" days. If they want 4-day weeks, that would seem a less-stressful way of doing it than by artificially shortening the days to squeeze more of them in.

Rich

 

[JOhnH]

I used to do shift work for a major trucking company. Each supervisor in our shop worked three 12 hour shifts each week. But every shift was different and as the youngest supervisor I got whatever was left over. I might have worked day shift on Sunday, grave yard on Wednesday and day shift on Thursday. Often times my 12 hour shifts were back to back for 24 hour shifts. I made a great salary and it was nice when I had 5 day weekends, but that rarely happened. The other good thing about it was that I lost a lot of weight, and it gave me the incentive to look for a better job.

But a shift like that will make you die young, and as pointed out in the report, it makes for some very very poor decisions and serious mistakes. One day we were short on tractors so I told a mechanic to put #8799 (a truck with no brakes) on the road while taking tractor #8977 of service (it was due for an oil change). Of course, the employee was a Teamster and I wasn't, so he was very happy to do EXACTLY what I told him to, since it made a supervisor look bad.

Fortunately, the driver returned to the shop before he left the yard due to the brakes. (The trailer brakes still worked so he didn't run into anything).