Vistara Airlines
Addressing pilot fatigue complaints
Increasing flight safety by mitigating fatigue risks.
User workshop
Interviews
Literature Review
The Methods
Piloted an effort to integrate a fatigue bio-mathematical modeling software with crew scheduling software.
Created a formal Fatigue Mitagation Process to handle incoming fatigue reports.
Organized a Fatigue Risk Management System training to evaluate and build upon the fatigue mitigation process we created.
Conducted training on recognizing fatigue with pilots.
The Impact
Lead Human Factors Researcher
My Role
VP, Flight Operations
VP Flight Safety
Manager, IT
Manager, Crew Scheduling
Manager, HR
Collaborators
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The Problem
The airline was experiencing increased occurrences of pilots complaining of fatigue but seeing very low numbers of official fatigue hazard reports (which are a part of capturing safety hazards in flight operations).
Research Objectives
Understand the reasons behind why pilots were getting fatigued
Generate strategies to prevent the occurrence of fatigue
Formulate a mitigation strategy to handle fatigue hazards
Create a safety reporting culture to increase fatigue reports through official channels without fear of punitive consequences
Research approach and methods
We organized two ‘fleet gatherings’ wherein all available pilots were invited to get together and discuss their experiences handling fatigue. We reasoned that a group environment would make pilots more comfortable to voice out their collective issues without fear of responses being identified with a particular individual.
User workshops:
Though the airline had a ‘fatigue report’ in place, there was no systematic process to handle fatigue reports once they came in. I conducted a literature review to understand industry best practices to develop a fatigue mitigation process.
Literature review:
Crew scheduling software (vendor) evaluation:
We conducted a competitive analysis style research to look at crew scheduling software that uses bio-mathematical models (that take into account circadian rhythms, quality of sleep, etc.) to create crew rosters that would prevent the occurrence of fatigue. This also included scheduling in-person meetings with representatives from different vendors.
Key Takeaways
Pilots thought that reporting fatigue through the official channels was inefficient because of a lack of a mitigation response in most cases.
Some pilots weren’t reporting fatigue because they failed to recognize the signs of fatigue - this represented a grave risk to flight safety.
Crew schedulers were not aware that pilot rosters were causing fatigue because they weren’t considering human factors such as quality of sleep, circadian rhythms, flight timings, commute time into account.
A training I conducted for crew schedulers to help them understand the effects of fatigue on flight safety
Impact
Piloted an effort to integrate a bio-mathematical modeling software with crew scheduling software. This would flag any rosters with a high likelihood of inducing fatigue, even if the rosters adhered to legal flight regulations. This would allow crew schedulers to account for human factors while making crew rosters and prevent occurrences of fatigue.
Brochure of one of the vendors we considered
Created a formal Fatigue Mitigation Process to handle incoming fatigue reports. The literature review was a great start to building a formal fatigue-handling method. We identified how much we should weight different elements of the fatigue reporting survey while calculating a safety severity score. We further identified rules to identify appropriate actions for different severity ratings. For example, if the severity score was higher than a certain threshold, the pilot would be pulled away from the rest of their flights for the day and advised to rest. If it was below a certain level, then they would be advised to take a caffeine break (one of the short-term solutions to mitigate fatigue) before their next flight (only if they had one flight remaining for the day)
Spearheaded the initiative to have the Flight Operations Team take a Fatigue Risk Management System training to ensure that our process aligned with industry standards and identify any areas of improvement in the system we created. I worked closely with the VP of Flight Safety to organize the 3-day Fatigue Risk Management training taken by our team, conducted by an instructor from our partner airline - Singapore Airlines.
Images from the Fatigue Risk Management Course
Conducted a training on recognizing fatigue with pilots. In the following fleet gathering, I presented relevant learnings from my literature review to our pilots to help them realize the signs of fatigue. This increased the number of official fatigue reports we received, allowing us to mitigate more safety hazards.
