Predictive efficacy of motion sickness history for airsickness

Airsickness is a common problem in the early stage of flying training. It can be sufficiently severe to impair the student's flight performance and his ability to learn. Without adequate evaluation and rehabilitation, intractable airsickness symptoms will force student pilots to be permanently grounded. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the predictive efficacy of motion sickness history for airsickness of flight students.

A motion sickness history questionnaire with four different scores was used to predict airsickness of student pilots in the Air Force Academy. The questionnaire asked subjects questions about the severity and frequency of motion sickness symptom experienced in nine different motion sickness situations before and after 12 years of age. The results were grouped to four different scores. Pearson correlation and Student's t-test methods were used to evaluate the correlations of the four different scores.

A total of 76 flight students in the class of 1997 who had under gone their flight-training course were included in this study. They were all healthy males with a mean age of 22.2 years (range, 20-24 years). The airsickness incidence of student pilots was 50%. The four different scores of motion sickness history questionnaire were highly correlated (r = 0.69-0.86, p < 0.01). The "after 12 years-of-age actually sick" score key had greater predictive validity for airsickness than the other motion sickness history questionnaire score keys and so did the "before 12 years-of-age feels sick" and "after 12 years-of-age feels sick" for no airsickness.

The motion sickness history questionnaire was an efficient method to predict airsickness among Air Force student pilots.