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FlyDubai Plague: Majority of Airlines Turns Blind Eye to Pilot Fatigue

© Sputnik / Maksim Blinov / Go to the mediabankFlyDubai's Boeing 737-800 lands at Vnukovo Airport
FlyDubai's Boeing 737-800 lands at Vnukovo Airport - Sputnik International
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In the wake of reports that the co-pilot of the crashed FlyDubai plane had been overworking, Air France pilot Captain Patrick Magisson told Radio Sputnik that, in the current safety regulation landscape, such situations are common.

FlyDubai Boeing-737-800 - Sputnik International
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Magisson, who is Vice Chairman of the Human Performance Committee at The International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations, said that a majority of airlines face safety problems related to fatigue issues by their pilots. During seasonal high-peak periods, personnel have to work much more than usual, experiencing a growing scale of fatigue, he explained.

“Pilots [are] a costly resource and all the operators want to exploit them as much as possible,” Magisson said. “And even without violating flight time limitation rules, obviously they [companies] try to make a maximum of these rules.”

In most cases, companies only strive for compliance with the laws, sticking to flight time limitation regulations which don’t actually address the fatigue problem in full, Magisson explained. Some airlines protect their overworked pilots through the means of special insurance, others don’t, he added.

“The problem that in many airlines they don’t accept it [the need to protect their staff from overwork], they put huge pressure on people, on the pilots, to go on flying anyway. Most probably, one of the reasons [for the FlyDubai crash] is cumulative fatigue.”

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According to RT, the co-pilot of the crashed FlyDubai Boeing Alejandro Alava had been working 11 days in a row prior to the deadly flight that resulted in 62 deaths. Given the timing of the FlyDubai crash, the fatigue could have become the major reason for the accident, Magisson asserted.

“They tried to land the second time at the worst time of the night. [It was] something like four o’clock in the morning,’ he said. “Definitely [it is] one of the worst moments [in the night for landing]. And they’ve made very challenging approach in very challenging weather. And this should be taken into account.”

To reverse this concerning tendency, companies must do “much more than compliance with the rules” to address fatigue issues, Magisson said. Fatigue risk management system should is implemented “little by little” and has to address all the problems associated with it, he concluded.

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