UPS aircrash probe exposes risks of having tired pilots fly by night

Yesterday, several documents that were made public by the US National Transportation Safety Board showed a crucial factor of a pre-dawn landing accident that happened on August 14 last year. Safety officials had earlier declared that the the UPS Flight 1354 crash was due to pilot errors as they try to touch down an airport in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bloomberg said that the two pilots who had flown the plane had earlier complained about their arduous nighttime schedules. One of the pilots reportedly did not take a rest prior to starting his nighttime shift. Both pilots had died in the August 14 plane crash.

At a hearing in Washington, documents and testimony revealed that the pilots of the Airbus A300-600F plane of UPS attempted to touch down at Runway 18, which was 5,000 feet or 1,524 meters shorter when compared to the alternate landing strip. The runway was discovered to have lacked a vital instrument-landing system that aided planes to properly position for landing whenever darkness or thick clouds obscure the flight crew's vision on the plane, Bloomberg said.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Bill Waldock, who teaches accident investigation, said that pilots who struggle to keep up their daytime schedules while working at night could dull responses whenever a critical situation occurs.

In a telephone interview from Prescott, Arizona, Waldock told Bloomberg, "We're basically daytime animals. We like to be awake in the daytime and sleep at night. For a lot of people, it's hard to flip-flop that.If you're chronically fatigued, you're more likely to make a mistake. If they were already fatigued and flying on autopilot, it might have lulled them into thinking they were a little further out."

Bloomberg said that freight carriers are currently an exemption to the new standards for passenger pilots that has been recently implemented this year. Maximum work shifts are now capped from 16 to 14 at best, and a minimum of 9 hours. The new aviation rules now restricted pilots from flying out at night, crossing various time zones or making several takeoffs and landings. However, the pilots union at UPS had lobbied US Congress to extend the new rules to freight companies. The worker interest group also sued the Federal Aviation Administration for the latter to apply the new rules to cargo companies.

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UPS Flight 1354 crash, UPS Flight 1354 crash trial, US National Transportation Safety Board, new FAA aviation rules

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