They just assume that the autopilot will take care of flying the plane, and their skills get rusty with lack of use. Then, if something goes wrong with the autopilot system the pilot and his or her crew members may not know what to do and they may not react as quickly as they need to in order to protect the passengers and the rest of the crew members from serious harm (Human, 2009).
The majority of people need to sleep approximately eight hours each night. If they do not get that level of sleep, they can be overly tired and that can cause them to make more mistakes than they otherwise would (Human, 2009). However, someone who has gotten eight hours of sleep is not necessarily caught up on his or her sleep. The quality of sleep the person has gotten and how tired he or she was before the sleep cycle occurred can also affect whether a person is rested after eight hours of sleep (Human, 2009). Some people need a little bit more sleep, and other people can function just fine on a bit less, but if a person is getting under six or seven hours of sleep consistently, he or she may not be a good choice to fly an airplane or be part of that airplane's crew until the sleep deficit is erased.
People who sleep very lightly and wake up easily and often may sleep nine or ten hours per night and still not feel as though they are rested. People who sleep well and solidly might be fine after seven hours. The lack of sleep that plagues flight crews and pilots generally comes not only from the hectic work schedule that they have but from the stress that they feel while they are on the job. Mental stress and strain weighs heavy on pilots and flight crews because they are responsible for so many people's lives (Human, 2009). Flying at night can also be highly stressful, as can the frequent changing of time zones. Some people feel that only physically demanding jobs cause fatigue, but mental stress and strain can be just as tiring, if not more so, when there is a lot of responsibility at stake.
What does this mean to the aviation industry and to the people who fly frequently? It means that the flight schedules and rest times may need to be changed for pilots and flight crews. There is some leeway expected, of course, because tired stewardesses are not as dangerous as tired pilots (Human, 2011). All members of the flight crew should have the option to be well-rested and ready for their shifts, but pilots have the most responsibility and the most difficult jobs. It simply stands to reason that there would be less human error in aviation if there were fewer overly-tired pilots handling large aircraft on a low amount of sleep and a high amount of stress. Pilots and crews often fly together regularly, so if the stewardesses and other flight crew members are tired, it is a relatively safe assumption that the pilot is also tired (Human, 2009). That is something to consider when it comes to aviation safety.
Even when it is clear that the pilots are tired and changes need to be made, it is not possible to fix things overnight. Some universities, though, are interested in looking for ways to correct the pilot and crew fatigue issues. In 1997, for example, Embry-Riddle University released a statement saying that they were going to offer two new degrees that would help to enhance the ideas behind human performance (Harris & Muir, 2005). That would help to make flying safer for everyone who is involved with it. Of course, not all universities are doing that sort of thing, and getting a degree from a university will not necessarily help someone correct every sleep-deprivation problem in the airline industry. Still, changes need to be made and it is very encouraging to see people realizing that and finding ways to attempt to make it better (Portal, 2011). As more of that takes place, air traffic will get safer.
One of the issues that Embry-Riddle addressed in their press release was that there may actually be a larger chance for accidents to take place if the plane is easy to fly. That sounds odd, of course, but autopilot and monitoring by computer means that the large majority of the time that the pilot co-pilot are "flying" the plane, they are actually just allowing the autopilot to do the work (Portal, 2011). Pilots can get bored and unhappy when they are really not allowed to do a large segment of the job that they were trained for, and when they are bored and unhappy they are not paying attention to...
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