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MattRogish

A couple of points:

1) Flying is incredibly safe

2) Tired, fatigued pilots crash planes

3) Airlines are low-margin businesses

4) There is no economic incentive to have pilots fly less and sleep more

Since there will always be a tension in allowing pilots to sleep more and work less (thus costing airlines more money) we have to conclude that pilots are going to fly without sufficient sleep.

To make the system more resilient to failure, we should take the ad-hoc napping that pilots do now (which is undeniably adding some safety via fatigue reduction) and add a blame-free procedure around it to ensure safety (e.g. when one pilot goes to the bathroom the other one puts on their oxygen mask in case of explosive decompression; something similar should be done for the awake pilot.)

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Does anyone know if the latest airplanes detect pilot drowsiness, as various cars have been implementing that for a while (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection)

The car keep the driver awake long enough so the driver can pull over and stop driving. What's the plane going to do in that situation?

If the autopilot is detecting the pilot is drowsy I'd rather it let the pilot sleep than prod the pilot awake into further drowsiness.

You seem to think that keeping the pilot awake is the only option (based on your car example and rhetorical question) but actually there are several options but it's important to be tracking pilot drowsiness as a datapoint first.

While Toyota's apparently monitors the driver herself, it seems most of the others on that list monitor driver input. Especially on a long haul flight where autopilot is on, they aren't likely to have any direct input, but should be monitoring the radio, engines, destination, and other key systems. The real concern with sleeping pilots is something like this happening [1], for which I never found a explanation other than sleeping pilots as particularly likely.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/26/airliner.flyby/

Yes, some models of the B777 (at least) will sound a warning if no controls have been moved/activated for 15 minutes:

"CREW ALERTNESS MONITOR The FMC continuously monitors the activation of switches on the mode control panel, EFIS control panel, display select panel, CDUs, and VHF/HF push-to-talk (PTT) switches. When a predefined time elapses after the last control activation, the EICAS advisory message PILOT RESPONSE is generated. The PILOT RESPONSE message can be cleared by pushing any control on any of the monitored systems or panels. If there is still no response after a short time, the EICAS caution message PILOT RESPONSE is displayed. If there is still no response, the warning message PILOT RESPONSE is displayed. Any control activation on the MCP, EFIS control panel, display select panel, CDUs, or VHF/HF transmitters resets the PILOT RESPONSE message. The PILOT RESPONSE message is inhibited at all altitudes below 20,000 feet while the aircraft is in a climb and the flaps are not up."

15 mins seems like a lot of time for a timeout. The B777 top speed is 950 kmph, which means the plane can travel ~237 km before someone wakes up. That's scary.

Doesn't point #4 contradict point #2. I mean, presumably, crashed planes have a cost.

True, but until you can quantify exactly how much more likely a tired pilot will be to crash the plane, it's impossible to quantify the cost. It may be impossible to accurately measure.

> There is no economic incentive to have pilots fly less and sleep more

Crashes are tremendously bad for business. Also, the laws about pilot rest are incredibly strict. That doesn't mean that pilots won't break them, but it does mean that the "economic incentive" aspect is pretty much moot.

Trouble is, airlines have always been a strategic asset to governments, a situation the airlines play like a fiddle. So even if one is willing to use a crash as a "market signal" it is likely to get washed out by TBTF.

The same incentives apply to long-haul truckers and international passenger bus drivers - but there somehow regulation works, and they're not allowed (at least in EU) to drive nearly as much as airline pilots, due to the same fatigue concerns. It's trivial to deny airlines the possibility of scheduling pilot shifts with '5 hours sleep in the last two days' as in the original article - the regulators simply have to do it, and as it will apply to all airlines, then even the low margins will accomodate the extra cents needed for less flexible scheduling of pilots.

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