Crew fatigue safety performance indicators for fatigue risk management systems

Area of Science:

• Aviation Safety
• Human Factors
• Occupational Health

Background:

• Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRMS) are increasingly adopted, but standardized safety performance indicators (SPIs) are needed.
• Current FRMS lack agreed-upon metrics to assess crew fatigue effectively.
• This research addresses the gap by proposing a set of SPIs for FRMS.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate an initial set of safety performance indicators (SPIs) for Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRMS).
• To establish methods for interpreting these SPIs using crew sleep, performance, and subjective fatigue data.
• To support the development of robust FRMS in aviation.

Main Methods:

• Data collected from 133 landing crewmembers across 220 flights on long-range and ultra-long-range operations.
• Evaluated SPIs included actigraphy-measured sleep/wake times, subjective fatigue/sleepiness scales (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, Samn-Perelli), and psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance.
• Statistical analysis using Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA identified significant differences in SPIs between flights.

Main Results:

• Significant differences were observed across a range of proposed SPIs when comparing different flights.
• Visual and quantitative comparisons using box plots and bar graphs illustrated these differences.
• The study identified variations in crew sleep, performance, and fatigue levels between flights.

Conclusions:

• Crew fatigue SPIs in FRMS should serve as decision aids, complementing operational SPIs.
• Comparing multiple SPIs between flights is more effective than setting individual thresholds.
• Global standardization of SPIs is crucial for advancing FRMS implementation and effectiveness.