Fatigue

How often do you feel strained, fatigued, or general discomfort during flying?

  • Always

    Votes: 1 1.5%

  • Usually

    Votes: 2 3.1%

  • Often

    Votes: 3 4.6%

  • Sometimes

    Votes: 22 33.8%

  • Rarely

    Votes: 35 53.8%

  • Never

    Votes: 9 13.8%
  • Total voters
    65
L

lux Miri

Filing Flight Plan
Joined
Mar 11, 2026
Messages
22
Display Name
Winnerwinner
How often do you feel strained, fatigued, or general discomfort during flying?
 
During? Rarely. But I notice that I sleep deeper at night after the flight.
 
Gary Ward said:
When I first started training at 55 years old I was shot after less than a half hour. And felt air sick at first.
Twice during training early on I had to stop at a park/boat ramp near the airport to rest so I could drive the rest of the way home.
As time went on I got better and the stress level went down and I was much less tired.

Now 10 years later and 1600 hrs I rarely feel tired after 1-2 hours of flying.
The AP helps a lot with that.
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I relate to that. The first time I did a flight sim, I was also pretty spent, and that was only an hour.
 
I don’t even remember one of my first four traps… which category is that?
 
Sometimes my right leg gets uncomfortable. If it's smooth sailing and there's no copilot/passenger, sometimes I'll stretch it over into the copilot footwell. Otherwise, only when my bladder gets full. (And if there's no copilot/passenger, I've got emergency supplies to handle that, too.)

So: Rarely.
 
Jim_R said:
Sometimes my right leg gets uncomfortable. If it's smooth sailing and there's no copilot/passenger, sometimes I'll stretch it over into the copilot footwell.
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If it’s smooth I’ll rack the seat all the way back in the Mooney, at 6’2” I can’t even reach the rudder pedals. Plenty of leg room!

Remember, Al Mooney was so tall he made Paul Bunyon look like Gary Coleman.
 
Flying invigorates me! Eons ago there were a few late nights and hung-over washed out feeling mornings (always 8+ hours bottle to throttle), but still perked up once airborne.
 
What time of year?
Spring Soaring Flights, 1st since putting the glider away in October I am ready to land after 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Summer August flight a number of weeks flying every day (Contest, Soaring Safari, other events) I can be up to 8+ hours of flight still going strong but usually running out of daylight at about the 8 hr mark.

So the more I fly the more stamina I build up.

Brian
 
Albany Tom said:
Is it smote or smited? Not to be picky, I just want to make sure he gets it right for his paper.
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Yeah, I considered using smacked instead.

Smote is the past tense of smited...or is it the other way around.??
 
Zeldman said:
Yeah, I considered using smacked instead.

Smote is the past tense of smited...or is it the other way around.??
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I'm not sure... And I think maybe in NY you have to be a member of the clergy to smite someone. I'm sure that's the case with evil spirits.

So based on this, I'm going to change my answer. Boring or unattractive crew AND evil spirits. Final answer.
 
Interesting the people that will answer this survey, not realizing the person collecting the data might be Feds (only 6 posts and just joined), and you report fatigue. The Feds know who responded and can get your data down to the IP address.
 
IMO, fatigue is a normal human state and can occur for various reasons. I've seen fatigue after 1.3-1.5 hours in virtually every student I've ever flown with on one lesson or another - especially when they are learning to land. That doesn't mean it's unsafe - but it must be managed before it gets to that point. The more experience you have, the more fatigue you can manage - up to a point.
 
BillTIZ said:
Interesting the people that will answer this survey, not realizing the person collecting the data might be Feds (only 6 posts and just joined), and you report fatigue. The Feds know who responded and can get your data down to the IP address.
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If there's that many Feds working to bait then searching internet forums for responders to this type of information, America has way more problems than discovering who may be tired behind the wheel (or yokes)....
 
The problem is that the poll covers too wide of a range to answer accurately. Claiming "fatigue" in professional aviation terms basically means you should no longer be flying because it's becoming unsafe. Whereas "strained" or "general discomfort" are, to me, much lower bars. So how do you answer the poll? I'm sure many of us experience "general discomfort" at least "often" - I mean airplanes aren't in general equivalent to your la-z-boy back home. But hopefully we're experiencing what we'd call "fatigue" no more than "rarely" - or we need to reconsider our flying habits or have a serious talk with our employer.

I'm in a job which can be highly tiring - many hours at low, bumpy altitudes conducting complex maneuvers often in congested airspace with a mission to complete. We as an organization talk about avoiding actual "fatigue" all the time - it's a regular topic for our group safety briefings and actually included in our daily preflight crew briefings. But can I be worn out at the end of the day and ready to go to the hotel and take a nap? Absolutely. Am I "fatigued"? If I am, I should have knocked it off already. So where does that fall in the poll options?
 
BillTIZ said:
Interesting the people that will answer this survey, not realizing the person collecting the data might be Feds (only 6 posts and just joined), and you report fatigue. The Feds know who responded and can get your data down to the IP address.
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I'm not a fed. I am new. Truthfully, if you've seen my other posts, you would know that this is for a school research project. So I hope that puts you at ease to answer this very not fed post.
 
RussR said:
The problem is that the poll covers too wide of a range to answer accurately. Claiming "fatigue" in professional aviation terms basically means you should no longer be flying because it's becoming unsafe. Whereas "strained" or "general discomfort" are, to me, much lower bars. So how do you answer the poll? I'm sure many of us experience "general discomfort" at least "often" - I mean airplanes aren't in general equivalent to your la-z-boy back home. But hopefully we're experiencing what we'd call "fatigue" no more than "rarely" - or we need to reconsider our flying habits or have a serious talk with our employer.

I'm in a job which can be highly tiring - many hours at low, bumpy altitudes conducting complex maneuvers often in congested airspace with a mission to complete. We as an organization talk about avoiding actual "fatigue" all the time - it's a regular topic for our group safety briefings and actually included in our daily preflight crew briefings. But can I be worn out at the end of the day and ready to go to the hotel and take a nap? Absolutely. Am I "fatigued"? If I am, I should have knocked it off already. So where does that fall in the poll options?
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This is a good question. Truth is, as a researcher, the term "fatigue" is just a reduced state of mental or physical capacity, at least in my pre-research for this project. I would especially consider this state while flying. I totally understand that this job is super tiring; my actual paper has very little to do with fatigue, it's about ergonomics.
 
lux Miri said:
This is a good question. Truth is, as a researcher, the term "fatigue" is just a reduced state of mental or physical capacity, at least in my pre-research for this project. I would especially consider this state while flying. I totally understand that this job is super tiring; my actual paper has very little to do with fatigue, it's about ergonomics.
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That being said, your questions provide a pretty good limitation for my paper to consider.
 
I believe Lindbergh stated the hardest part about flying across the Atlantic was staying awake. 33 hours aloft is a long time.
 
While flying VERY rarely. After flying, much more often, depending on how bumpy, hot and/or challenging the flight was.
 
Brad Smith said:
I believe Lindbergh stated the hardest part about flying across the Atlantic was staying awake. 33 hours aloft is a long time.
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I'm also tip my hat to the man for finding the field in the dark and getting that literal taildragger down in that crowd without a ground loop ...
 
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