`This is the captain of your Frankfurt-to-Atlanta flight. We’re now cruising smoothly over the Atlantic at 35,000 feet, so I’m going to snooze off for a little while. These long flights are exhausting, so I could use some shut-eye.”
No, passengers won’t hear such a message over their plane’s address system. But pilots are napping aloft with permission from a growing number of international carriers.
Armed with sleep research by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration among others, airlines ranging from British Airways to Australia’s Qantas encourage exhausted pilots– even in two-man cockpits–to doze off for as long as 40 minutes in less demanding parts of long-haul flights.
It isn’t something that the airlines have gone out of their way to publicize. The practice hasn’t been adopted in the U.S., in part because of fear of the public reaction to pilots sleeping on the job. But sanctioned pilot naps were initially proposed by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1993, and some officials say the proposal could resurface soon.
Governments and carriers abroad justify napping on the basis that a well-designed program of “controlled cockpit rest” improves safety by helping both pilots stay fresh for the journey’s critical approach-and-landing phase.
“Look at it this way: We can control the procedure or pretend it doesn’t happen,” says Bryan Wyness, Air New Zealand’s line-operations manager and a Boeing 747-400 pilot. On routine flights in today’s highly computerized cockpits, he says, “long-haul travel causes pilots to feel sleepy.”
British Airways, long considered a bellwether carrier, adopted the practice in June 1996, and Air New Zealand launched its napping policy around the same time. Canada’s aviation board gave the go-ahead for Canadian airlines to develop controlled-rest programs in October 1996, and Air Canada proposed such a plan last year (limited to its older, three-pilot aircraft).
Canadian Airlines International also is developing a program. The Netherlands looks set to soon allow napping after an application by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Other airlines with napping policies include Swissair, Finnair and Germany’s Lufthansa.
Fatigue has vexed aviators since long-haul flight began. In his autobiography, Charles Lindbergh wrote of his celebrated 1927 trans-Atlantic solo journey: “My mind clicks on and off. . . . My whole body argues dully that nothing, nothing life can attain, is quite so desirable as sleep.”
Granted, today’s jetliners don’t need 33 1/2 hours to lumber from New York to Paris the way Lindbergh’s monoplane did. But fatigue has become a greater concern in the last decade as both Boeing Co. and Europe’s Airbus Industrie began delivering newer wide-bodies with flight decks designed for two crew members rather than three.
In the U.S., it is common knowledge in the FAA that U.S. pilots routinely nap on long-haul flights. But a napping regulation “could not make it through the political circles, where it was felt that as regards passengers, it could strike fear in their hearts,” says Gary Davis, deputy manager of the FAA’s Air Transportation Division.
There were worries about a backlash against government regulators if a crash or other incident occurred on an aircraft carrying a napping co-pilot. In addition, there was deep concern among some U.S. aviation officials that research by NASA didn’t present an open-and-shut case that would support such a far-reaching policy change.
“All the pilots accept that (napping) happens,” says Davis, who predicts the issue will resurface in the U.S. “The fact that the Europeans are doing it, and successfully, means that it will come up here again.”
Outside the U.S., opposition to napping in two-pilot cockpits is led by the largest French pilots’ union, which argues that some pilots could have dulled reactions if called upon to quickly respond to an emergency. Some international carriers, moreover, say they aren’t won over by studies showing napping to be beneficial.
“We don’t necessarily agree with the findings,” says Karmjit Singh, Singapore Airlines’ assistant director of corporate affairs. Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways also says it’s “not comfortable” with napping in two-pilot cockpits. “At this point we would prefer to see other carriers be pioneers in this area,” a top Cathay official says.
As the debate goes on, planemakers also actively are pursuing pilot-alertness studies. This spring, Airbus, the world’s No. 2 planemaker, will test a nap-encouraging device that may become common in its long-haul planes. Using flashing lights and then an alarm, the contraption is designed to make sure that the pilot who isn’t napping stays awake. Boeing offers a somewhat similar device as an option in some long-haul aircraft.
The napping debate also has spawned studies on alertness monitoring. New devices to monitor a pilot’s alertness by such means as checking eye blinks or head tilt are being tested in the U.S. The issue is controversial. “There are legal and ethical issues to deal with,” says Dave Dinges, a University of Pennsylvania researcher whose lab, in conjunction with Harvard and Stanford Universities, is testing such devices for the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. “Who has the right to the data, and then what do you do with the information?” he asks.
Dinges suggests that such devices be used to help rather than punish tired pilots. “Pilots are fiercely independent,” he says, “and if we use this for enforcement, we’ll alienate the ability to promote alertness.”
