The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue

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Nearly everyone experiences fatigue, but some professions—such as aviation, medicine and the military—demand alert, precise, rapid, and well-informed decision making and communication with little margin for error. The potential for fatigue to negatively affect human performance is well established. Concern about this potential in the aviation context extends back decades, with both airlines and pilots agreeing that fatigue is a safety concern. A more recent consideration is whether and how pilot commuting, conducted in a pilot's off-duty time, may affect fatigue during flight duty.

In summer 2010 the U.S. Congress directed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to update the federal regulations that govern pilot flight and duty time, taking into account recent research related to sleep and fatigue. As part of their directive, Congress also instructed FAA to have the National Academy of Sciences conduct a study on the effects of commuting on pilot fatigue. The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue reviews research and other information related to the prevalence and characteristics of commuting; to the science of sleep, fatigue, and circadian rhythms; to airline and regulatory oversight policies; and to pilot and airline practices.

The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue discusses the policy, economic, and regulatory issues that affect pilot commuting, and outlines potential next steps, including recommendations for regulatory or administrative actions, or further research by the FAA.

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222 pages · 6 x 9 · paperback
ISBN Paperback: 0-309-21696-6
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-21697-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/13201

Suggested citation

Transportation Research Board and National Research Council. 2011. The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Clinton V. Oster, Jr.

Clinton V. Oster, Jr., Chair, is a professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University. His research focuses on air traffic management and aviation infrastructure, with an emphasis on aviation safety. His research also includes airline economics, airline competition policy, and energy policy. Professor Oster has co-authored five books on aviation safety and policy. He has been a consultant on aviation and other transportation issues to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), the FAA, NASA, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, state and local governments, and private-sector companies in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Australia. He has participated in several NRC committees, serving as chair for four committees and one expert panel. Professor Oster is a member of the National Aviation Advisory Group of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. He has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and as an expert witness for both the Environment and Natural Resource Division and the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He served as the research director for the Aviation Safety Commission as well as the director of Indiana University's Transportation Research Center and as associate dean at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He received a B.S.E. degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University, an M.S. in urban and public affairs from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

Ben Berman

Benjamin A. Berman is a senior research associate in the Human Systems Integration Division at the NASA Ames Research Center (affiliated through San Jose State University) and is a pilot for a major U.S. air carrier with 9,000 hours of flight experience. Before returning to professional flying in 2001, he was on the staff of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for 10 years. He completed his NTSB career as the chief of the Major Investigations Division, managing the investigations of U.S. domestic and foreign air carrier accidents. Earlier, he led the Operational Factors Division (responsible for flight operations, air traffic control, and meteorology investigations), served as the flight operations investigator for major cases including the USAir B-737 accident in Pittsburgh and the ValuJet DC-9 accident in the Everglades, and managed flight crew human factors research projects at NTSB. Berman holds an Airline Transport Pilot Certificate with type ratings for the Boeing 777, Boeing 737, Embraer 120, and Dornier 228. He received the A.B. degree summa cum laude in economics from Harvard College.

J. Lynn Caldwell

J. Lynn Caldwell is a senior research psychologist for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and is currently stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. During her 11 years with the U.S. Army's Aeromedical Research Laboratory, she performed human factors work, conducting numerous simulator and in-flight investigations on fatigue countermeasures and circadian rhythms in rated military pilots. From 2002 to 2005, she was a member of the Warfighter Fatigue Countermeasures program at Brooks City-Base, TX. From 2005-2007, she was a distinguished visiting scholar at the U.S. Air Force Academy. She has served as a fatigue consultant for various U.S. Air Force Commands, and other military and civilian groups. She frequently provides fatigue management workshops, safety briefings and training courses to aviation personnel, flight surgeons, commanders, and safety officers. She is certified as a sleep specialist by the American Board of Sleep Medicine. She obtained her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi.

David F. Dinges

David F. Dinges is a tenured professor and chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, and director of the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, and associate director of the Center for Sleep and Respiratory Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. His research focuses on physiological, neurobehavioral, and cognitive effects of sleep loss, disturbances of circadian biology, and stress, and the implications of these unmitigated effects on health and safety. He currently leads the Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors Team for the NASA funded National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He has been a member of the NIH NINR Council. He has been president of the U.S. Sleep Research Society and of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, and served on the board of directors of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the National Sleep Foundation. He is currently editor-in-chief of SLEEP, the leading scientific journal on sleep research and sleep medicine in the world. He has received numerous awards, including the 2004 Decade of Behavior Research Award from the American Psychological Association, and the 2007 NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. He has an A.B. in psychology from Saint Benedict's College, a M.S. on physiological psychology from Saint Louis University, an honorary M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in physiological psychology from Saint Louis University. He was a member of the NRC Committee on Optimizing Graduate Medical Trainee (Resident) Hours and Work Schedules to Improve Patient Safety and Working Group on Assessment of Community Response to High Energy Impulsive Sounds.

R. Curtis Graeber

R. Curtis Graeber is the president of The Graeber Group Ltd. He was a Boeing senior technical fellow and served as the chief engineer for human factors and director of regional safety programs at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He has served in several management positions in research, airplane design, and safety at Boeing. He led Boeing’s efforts to improve regional safety including industry development and implementation of the global aviation safety roadmap. Before joining Boeing he led the flight crew fatigue research program at NASA’s Ames Research Center and served as chief of flight human factors. He has authored over 100 scientific and technical articles, and is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Aerospace Medical Association. He also served as the human factors specialist for the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. He chaired the FAA’s ARAC Working Group for Controlled Rest on the Flight Deck (1991-93), the Flight Safety Foundation’s “think tank” (Icarus Committee), and FSF’s Ultra Long-Range Crew Alertness Initiative. He led ICAO’s Fatigue Risk Management and Flight Time Limitations Subgroups and currently leads the ICAO Fatigue Risk Management Task Force. His safety related awards include the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators’ “Cumberbatch Trophy”, the Aerospace Medical Association’s Boothby-Edwards Award, the International Federation of Airworthiness “Whittle Safety Award”, an Aviation Week & Space Technology “Laurel” (1999), the FSF-Airbus Human Factors Award, and the Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences’ Maurice Roy Medal. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at Massey University’s Sleep Wake Research Centre in New Zealand, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Sleep Foundation. He also serves as the Chair of Air New Zealand’s Independent Alertness Advisory Panel. He holds a Ph.D. in neuropsychology from the University of Virginia.

David E. Meyer

David E. Meyer (NAS) is a faculty member of the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Program in the Department of Psychology at Michigan. He worked for several years as a member of Technical Staff in the Human Information Processing Research Department at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan. His teaching and his research - sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and Office of Naval Research - have dealt with fundamental aspects of human perception, attention, learning, memory, language, movement production, reaction time, multitasking, executive mental control, human-computer interaction, personality and cognitive style, cognitive aging, cognitive neuroscience, mathematical models, and computational models. Reports of this research have appeared in various books and periodicals such as Science, the Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, Memory & Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Memory and Language, and volumes of the Attention and Performance symposium series, as well as other publications. He is a fellow in the Society of Experimental Psychologists, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, and American Association for The Advancement of Science. The American Psychological Association has honored him with its Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. A mathematical psychologist and cognitive scientist, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Matthew Rizzo

Matthew Rizzo is professor of neurology, engineering, and public policy, at the University of Iowa. He is the vice chair for clinical/translational research, and director of the Division of Neuroergonomics, its Visual Function Laboratory, and its instrumented vehicles, all in the Department of Neurology. His clinical interests and activities include behavioral neurology, cognitive neuroscience, and memory disorders. His research interests include behavioral disturbances resulting from CNS injury, neural substrates of human vision (including attention and visuomotor control), aging and dementia, driving performance, and driving simulation. Dr. Rizzo has conducted research on fatigue and truckers for the National Institutes of Health and the Iowa Department of Transportation. Dr. Rizzo is a member of the American Academy of Neurology, the American Neurological Association, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Vision Sciences Society. Dr. Rizzo is a member of the NRC’s standing Committee on Human-Systems Integration. He has an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

David J. Schroeder

David J. Schroeder is a private consultant. He was a manager of the Aerospace Human Factors Research Division at the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Civil Aero Medical Institute (CAMI). He was with the FAA for several decades, in various roles such as supervisor of Clinical Psychology Research and was also responsible for administering the FAA Employee Attitude Survey for 22 years. His research is documented in over 40 Office of Aviation Medicine (OAM) technical reports and in more than 125 presentations in areas of interest such as disorientation, job attitudes, stress, age, shiftwork and fatigue, and color vision. He participated in numerous national human factors working groups and helped develop many international collaborative research projects. He also assisted with the psychological screening of federal air marshals during their post-9/11 hiring increase. He was the Office of Aviation Medicine Manager of the Year in 2005 and led his division to become the OAM Office of the Year in 1999 and 2005. He is past president of the Oklahoma Psychological Association, the APA Division of Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology, and the Aerospace Medical Association, and was a division representative to the APA Council for three years. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oklahoma.

J. F. Yates

Frank Yates is an Arthur F. Thurnau professor, a professor of psychology, and a professor of marketing and business administration at the University of Michigan. He is also a principal in the Psychology Department's Judgment and Decision Laboratory. In addition, he is the coordinator of the Decision Consortium, which is a University of Michigan-wide association of faculty and students whose scholarship has significant decision making elements to it. The Decision Consortium maintains a variety of forums and other means by which scholars from fields as diverse as psychology, business, medicine, law, public policy, engineering, philosophy, and political science can communicate and collaborate with one another on decision-related problems that share common intellectual underpinnings. The main focus of Yates’s scholarship has always been on decision making, at both the theoretical and practical levels. That work has emphasized achieving a deep understanding of how people decide in the challenging conditions of real life and developing means of assisting them to decide better in those circumstances. A past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Yates plays an active role in a variety of other efforts that are intended to advance decision scholarship. Especially significant are efforts involving scholarly journals. Yates is the associate editor (and co-founder) of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. In addition, he has been a member of the editorial boards of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Medical Decision Making, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and Psychological Review. He has been an active member of various service organizations in government and elsewhere, including the National Research Council’s Committee on Human Factors and Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, and the Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation’s Decision, Risk, and Management Science Program. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Closed

The Effects of Commuting on Pilot Fatigue

June 3, 2011

12:00 AM - 12:00 AM (EDT)

Past

Additional Information

Is it a Closed Session event?

Institution Closed

The following committee members were present at the closed sessions of the event

Clinton V. Oster
Ben Berman
J. Lynn Caldwell
David F. Dinges
R. Curtis Graeber
David E. Meyer
Matthew Rizzo
David J. Schroeder

The following topics were discussed in the closed sessions:

The committee discussed the report draft in the context of the response to review comments.

The following materials (written documents) were made available to the committee in the closed sessions:

None

Date of posting of Closed Session Summary:

June 06, 2011

Contact

Eric Chen

202-334-1747
erchen@nas.edu

Location

Keck Center

500 5th St NW

Washington DC 20001, USA

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It is essential to the National Academies mission of providing evidence-based advice that participants in any of our meetings or events avoid political or partisan statements or commentary and maintain a culture of mutual respect. The statements and presentations during our meetings or events are solely those of the individual participants and do not necessarily represent the views of other participants or the National Academy of Sciences, which is a non-partisan, tax exempt organization that includes under its Charter the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, and that operates the National Research Council.

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