58 RAMP SAFETY BRIEFING Dead tired?
It’s an area that receives little coverage, but fatigue management is becoming an increasingly critical factor in today’s handling operation.
n an ideal world, it shouldn’t happen, of course. But since most of us don’t inhabit Utopia, tiredness or fatigue is a fact of life – and, occasionally, death. Whilst fatigue is a topic that has not been covered before within these pages, recent developments in Brussels have brought this issue out of the shadows and placed it under the spotlight of the aviation sector.
A few months back, the EU’s proposed airline worker fatigue plans were deemed unsafe by unions within the UK; and indeed, the UK’s Prime Minister was amongst the decision makers who received a final warning from unions representing Britain’s airline pilots and cabin crew that the European Union’s pilot fatigue plans were simply falling short of the mark.
Pilot fatigue is something that is well documented and it has been the subject of many studies, probably because the pilot’s rôle is a prominent one and the responsibility that attaches to it is considerable. In this instance, pilots from the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) and cabin crew members from Unite, the UK’s largest union, delivered a dossier containing scientific reports, correspondence and testimonials to the Prime Minister, the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority. These latter bodies have been tasked with the decision of whether to accept the EU’s standards (which are seen as inferior in quality) or adhere to the UK’s regulations. BALPA went on record to stress that all fatigue regulations must be safe and that they must be scientifically sound; further, they must recognise the danger that fatigue presents to the travelling public. BALPA felt that the rules the EU were trying to impose on the UK would have the effect of making pilots fly in a state of greater tiredness, and more often, which could lead to the distinct possibility of a fatigue-related accident.
The writing is most definitely on the wall in this context. The proposals from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) had looked set to replace the UK’s current domestic regulations. New standby provisions could see pilots landing an aircraft after being awake for 22 hours or more. There could be a reduction in the number of pilots required on long haul flights, too. There might also be the elimination of restrictions on the number of early starts that a pilot can make; and
new rules could sanction longer overnight duties than those which scientists currently consider to be safe. These are just a few examples of how the proposals, far from protecting against pilot fatigue, could actually create it.
An expert’s perspective
John Wilkinson is Principal Human Factors Consultant and an OSHCR Registered Consultant at The Keil Centre, in Edinburgh, in the UK. He is well versed in the subject of fatigue in many industry sectors. In this instance, an outsider’s view is a valuable one.
“I write this piece uncontaminated
by direct knowledge of the aviation or ground handling industry. The good news is that I have a long background in major hazard sectors in other industries, particularly in the onshore major hazard side, when I worked as Human Factors Team Lead for the UK Regulator, the Health and Safety Executive (the HSE). I investigated the human factor aspects of the UK’s 2005 Buncefield (oil storage terminal) major accident and I was the human factors subject matter expert reviewer for the US Chemical Safety Board’s report on the BP Texas City disaster. Fatigue and shift work issues loomed large in both these incidents, and, while they could not be said to be direct causes, they certainly contributed significantly to each incident. All that I say here can be found in two pieces of core HSE guidance, referenced at the end, and freely available. Therefore, I will cover only the basic issues here.
“On being invited to look across the ramp to fatigue in ground handling, I was immediately struck by two things. First, while fatigue and shift work in flight crew is well studied and understood, there appears to be very little research on the associated ground handling activities. Second, there is clearly a history of incidents to which fatigue has contributed: for example, the snow plough incident described in the February edition of this magazine (see Ramp Safety Briefing pages). But, as I said, this area is not as well recorded and studied as aviation incidents. “With costs of ground handling incidents put at around US$4bn a year (Being safe on the ground, in the June 2012 issue), coupled with the ongoing financial and economic squeeze, this is
clearly not good news. “Andrew Hopkins, the guru of major
hazards for the sectors in which I work, once famously observed: “an airline would not make the mistake of measuring air safety by looking at the number of routine injuries occurring to its staff. Baggage handling is a major source of injury for airline staff but the number of injuries experienced by baggage handlers tells us nothing about flight safety.” However, while this is true, there are many other ground handling activities that can impact directly or indirectly on flight safety: for example, pushbacks, cargo or baggage loading, vehicle movements, fuelling and so on. “Fatigue – or tiredness, for the words
are interchangeable – is just one of a number of performance influencing factors in the literature but a significant one. Getting the management of fatigue and shift work right can optimise the likelihood of success and reduce that of error. Getting it wrong will do the opposite, as the snow plough incident showed. There’s really no difference between flight crew and ground staff because, guess what, they are all human and their performance drops off with tiredness. We humans are day animals: we aren’t wired for night work. So, any shift working is always going to be a compromise in the light of this basic natural fact. In the same way that jetlag impacts on us, shift work creates its own lags.
“And it gets worse. We are more prone
to error in the small hours (between 02.00-05.00 roughly), and again, though less so, in the early afternoon. These dips reflect our natural circadian rhythms. We also get tired after working long hours but there are no surprises there. But in an industry where 12 hour shifts are often adopted, this means that for the last three to four hours, we are likely to be significantly less alert, productive and safe. Put the two together – the small hours and the end of a 12 hour shift - and bingo, you have prime foul-up time.
GROUND HANDLING INTERNATIONAL APRIL 2013
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