Encourage crews to report fatigue risk during pandemic: UK CAA

UK civil aviation regulators are stressing that operators need to encourage crews to report fatigue-related occurrences as a result of abnormal duty patterns, in order to ensure that risk-assessment models remain valid during the pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in severe disruption to carriers’ services and forced aircraft crews to adapt rapidly to different duty cycles and changes to their environment. “Operators should recognise that safety reporting and behaviours may have changed and seek to validate all available information and safety data,” says the UK Civil Aviation Authority in a newly-published safety notice. It states that pilots and cabin crew should be “actively encouraged” to report occurrences relating to fatigue, and feel able to self-declare that they are potentially unfit to fly “without fear of punitive action”. “The current methods of assessing and managing crew fatigue may require additional considerations and measures to identify and mitigate fatigue risks,” the notice adds.<br/>