Controlled breaks as a fatigue countermeasure on the flight deck

Area of Science:

• Aviation Psychology
• Human Factors Engineering
• Sleep Science

Background:

• Maintaining crew vigilance during long, automated nighttime flights is a significant challenge.
• Current alertness management systems and countermeasures for flight crews are limited.
• In-flight breaks are used by pilots, but their effectiveness lacks controlled study.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the hypothesis that brief, regular breaks improve alertness and performance during overnight flights.
• To investigate the impact of scheduled short breaks on pilot fatigue and vigilance.

Main Methods:

• Fourteen two-man crews participated in a 6-hour simulated nighttime Boeing 747-400 flight.
• The treatment group received 5 hourly short breaks; the control group received 1 mid-flight break.
• Collected data included continuous EEG/EOG, subjective sleepiness, and psychomotor vigilance performance.

Main Results:

• The treatment group exhibited reduced slow eye movements and theta-band activity post-break compared to controls.
• Subjective alertness significantly increased for up to 25 minutes after breaks in the treatment group.
• No objective vigilance performance improvement was observed, with expected deterioration due to sleep pressure.

Conclusions:

• Short, regular breaks effectively reduce objective and subjective sleepiness in flight crews during nighttime operations.
• Breaks appear to mitigate fatigue for at least 15-25 minutes post-intervention.
• This suggests short-duration breaks are a viable in-flight fatigue countermeasure for pilots.