A Survey on Sleeping Patterns and Fatigue among Pilots in South East Asia

Abstract

Since commercial aviation started, fatigue among pilots and aircrew has been acknowledged as a human factor safety issue. This survey was conducted between September and December 2009 among airlines pilots. The three main objectives of this study are: to identify sleep patterns, their promoting and interfering factors of airlines pilots. This survey results revealed that most of the pilots do not have any problem to get to sleep and majority of them had never taken any sleeping aids, such as: alcohol or medication. The five sleep interfering factors, which include environmental (i.e. heat, noise and lighting) and physiological (i.e. nature’s call and personal worries) were investigated in this survey. It was found out that personal worries top the list. From this study, it can be concluded that fatigue issue is significant among South East Asian airlines pilot.