Ibra wrote:
Just don’t fly weather, long distance or tailwheel without enough sleep
Or aerobatics 
AFAIK being deprived of sleep will make your blood pressure rise. I don’t know if higher blood pressure is the cause, but it certainly is more difficult to orient yourself in 3D space, with varying g forces if you haven’t slept well. Could be age also, I’m not 20 anymore, and I need a good night sleep
It makes me wonder. Is this age related, or is it more that as we grow older we recognize and feel that we lack sleep more “accurately”?
If any of our tech wizards / academics are on the lookout for a project, I have often considered that it would be very useful to have a mobile phone app with a checklist and a few cognitive tests as measures of cognitive function. It would be wrong, clearly, for the app to make ‘go/no-go’ decisions for you, but if you normally scored 90/100 and today you were scoring 40/100 then that might be something you could factor into your decision-making.
I’m thinking of things like the Stroop effect… There are a myriad of cognitive tests out there.
The problem is that I’m an academic by nature and I like to overcomplicate things. I can fully imagine a myriad of questions or objections (e.g. how great are learning effects) that might be asked about a program. And yet I often find myself thinking that such a thing would be useful.
MedEwok wrote:
Is it enough to “listen” to your body or is there some “objective” ammount of tiredness that is tolerable (or not)?
The challenge I see with myself is that one of the first symptoms of fatigue is an impaired ability to listen to my body. So the last thing I would consider is my perceived “fitness” when I know I should be tired.
I’d rather suggest some simple test:
If you are a chess player, play Blitz against Fritz at an ELO rating that is 150pt below your normal level (alternatively play some Blitz on play chess against weaker opponents). If you don’t win like piece of cake, you should not fly.
Obviously one could do the same thing with Tetris or any other computer game one plays often enough to have a baseline of what normal performance would look like.
kwlf wrote:
However, I have long thought that it interesting that aviation, at least officially if not always in practice, has an appreciation that pilots are not machines and that if you want to reduce mishaps the best way is to accept this and work around it. Looking at the policies-on-busts thread perhaps aviation is moving backwards, and perhaps medicine is making slow steps forwards. But anyway, I am pushing the thread off topic towards one of my minor obsessions. I apologise and will stop.
I don’t think that is off-topic at all. I enjoyed reading every one of your posts.
The work environment in which we live, wheter as pilot, doctor, businessperson or whatever, is by itself a “human factor” when we fly (or do any other risky activities, for that matter). We are all humans and shaped by our environment. It is important to keep in mind how this may even subconsciously affect our decisionmaking.
I think about this very often. Being an anaesthetist is very similar to being a pilot, possibly more than any other profession which does not involve controlling a vehicle. The different “phases” of a flight are mirrored by the different phases of anaesthesia: we even “preflight” the patients (by gathering their complete medical history and doing a focused examination). The induction of anaesthesia mirrors the take off/departure phase of a flight, the operation itself is akin to the cruise and afterwards you have to awaken the patient again, which is like the landing (and, similarly, the thing that counts the most in measuring your success ).
But, while these comparisons are easily made, there are of course major differences. A patient is infinitely more complex than even the most sophisticated aircraft, and how they will “react” to the surgical stress and the pharmaceuticals we inject is nowhere near as predictable as what will happen if you press a button or toggle a switch in your cockpit. And, of course, especially in emergency settings, the patient is more akin to an aircraft which you need to fly despite knowing that one of its four engines is broken and the status of the other three, as well as the wiring behind the instruments, are unknown.
This gives rise to an attitude to risk that is much more cavalier than in aviation. Often, we look at each other as a team, even voice out aloud that what we are going to do next is dangerous – only to then do it anyway. “It will all work out” or variations thereof are common.
Now where do I want to go with this long, winded excursion? Basically, I am afraid that this attitude to risk is so deeply ingrained somewhere that it disables my “alarm bells” when going flying, especially when tired. Because then, a certain learned behaviour is more likely to take over. And while there is no alternative to treating the emergency patient at 2am even though you are tired – because there is nobody else who can do it – there always is the possibility of simple remaining on the ground, in practically all aviation scenarios (perhaps short of military/medevac flights).
Yesterday I pulled the aircraft out the hangar. I was feeling really tired after an accumulated week of not feeling too well, not enough sleep and a busy work/family week. The flight would have been short but intense 40 minutes through busy airspace, most of it in IMC from 1200Ft, passing through a TMA and short ENR portion with an approach in IMC with radar vectors to ELLX. I hesitated till the EOBT passed, but felt it was too much on how I was feeling in general with emphasis on the F from IAMSAFE. I canceled the flight pushed the aircraft back in the hangar and drove home…I am 55 almost..:-). I told myself I am not in a war and need to fly a combat mission….no it’s not good for the engine to remain idle for another week…but what the heck…..It’s not easy to say no to yourself I am still learning ;-)
Congrats!
Very interesting thread. While I don’t have to do this anymore, there used to be situations in my work where I had to push on into ridiculously long hours. What I found was that while at work, I remained highly focused. However, after the job was done, that ‘high’ lasted for a little longer, but was followed by a rapid slide in concentration, awareness, general wellbeing. Would it have been a good idea to go flying after one of those nights ? Prob90 not.
@Vref: congrats, good call!
MedEwok wrote:
Often, we look at each other as a team, even voice out aloud that what we are going to do next is dangerous – only to then do it anyway
But do you have a choice?
I think maybe the focus on “safety” as an over ruling aspect of flying is wrong in many circumstances. Terms like “sane” and “stupid” makes more sense. Just think about it for a minute. The opposite of safe is unsafe, but what does that even mean, unsafe? Putting “sane” and “stupid” along the axis makes more sense.
MedEwok’s early morning flights after a 24 h shift. Are they safe? Are they unsafe? No one really knows. There are so many other factors involved (his actual physical/psychical condition, what kind of flight, what kind of aircraft, other traffic and so on). Now think in terms of sane/stupid. I think most of us have a tendency to think they are a bit on the stupid side, all things considered. Not entirely and utterly bananas, but slightly out there We are also left with a small question of “why”
LeSving wrote:
erms like “sane” and “stupid” makes more sense.
I like the concept – the only practical challenge is that sometimes we fall into the trap to judge a behavior too much from the results. The same thing we might call “sane” when seeing it we are more likely to call stupid after an accident happened.
