Medical and Welfare Director, Dave Church.

I am writing this article from my hotel room in New York after my third night of very disrupted sleep.

With the onset of Ultra Long-Range (ULR) flying, and with only more to come, it is appropriate to remind our pilots, in particular, that they must become more responsible for their own fatigue levels. With every new route comes the excitement of seeing a new city and taking in everything it has to offer. However, do not allow this to interfere with ensuring you are in a fit state to complete the flight home and – if this means sleeping during odd hours to make it work – this is far more important than any Instagram photo on a bridge or statue!! NZALPA’s industrial team has done a superb job ensuring we have a Special Scheduling Agreement (SSA) that protects our fatigue levels as much as possible. However, the onus is still on the licence holder to ensure they are in a fit state to fly – especially with the onset of winter operations out of Chicago and New York that will require some tough operational decisions to be made.

I appreciate that the ULR operation does not apply to all ALPA members. We know that sickness and understaffing are currently placing huge pressures on rosters and training systems throughout the industry – please do ensure you are not fatigued and are fit to fly or control every time you go to work. This leads into my focus for this article, which is on Human Factors as we manage our way out of the worst of the COVID era.

Our operational problems have not gone away now that COVID is relatively in the past – we simply have a very different set of challenges that can lead to a degradation in operational safety and put pressure on pilot and controller well-being.

Whereas during COVID we had the perfect storm of factors affecting members – with redundancy, job insecurity, financial impacts, airline underfunding and lack of currency being just a few. Now that we are emerging from COVID there has been a transition to a new set of factors, such as crew sickness, staff shortages, rostering and scheduling demands, endless training, new and unfamiliar operational staff, dissatisfied passengers and many more, I am sure.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) definition of Human Factors in aviation is “A multidisciplinary effort to generate and compile information about human capabilities and limitations and apply that information to equipment, systems, facilities, procedures, environments, training, staffing, and personnel management for safe comfortable and effective human performance”. Long-winded, I agree, but as pilots and controllers we are one of the last steps in the chain, as defined above, to ensure a safe operation.

As we emerge from COVID, all the factors I mentioned earlier require significant monitoring and continual reporting to ensure we are operating at a level of human performance that ensures a safe operation.

The NZ Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) recently attended a regulatory conference where pilot human factors post-COVID was the key topic on the agenda, and is keenly aware of this issue. I have been in discussions with them to ensure, post-COVID, that there is sufficient monitoring of pilots to ensure both pilot wellbeing and the maintenance of operational safety. However, monitoring by CAA is hard to do, except for our annual medicals which are reliant on the Designated Medical Examiner (DME) recognising those factors affecting wellbeing. CAA is also reliant on Safety Management Systems (SMS) and fatigue reporting to maintain awareness. Consequently, if you think there is something in your  airline or aviation organisation that is affecting the safety of the operation, please do report and monitor it. This will inhibit insufficient regard for Human Factors that affect safety – and (as always) keep a watch on colleagues and other staff to ensure they are operating at what you believe is an acceptable level of human performance. If there is any concern, remember NZALPA has resources through Professional Standards (PROSTAN), the Peer Assistance Network (PAN), Human Intervention Motivation Study (HIMS) and the Fatigue Working Group to help deal with any human performance issues.

Whilst talking about CAA, I am still campaigning for the removal of the anonymous reporting tick box on the CAA website. We are still hearing of cases where individuals are using anonymity to maliciously and deliberately impact pilot careers and licences. NZALPA agrees with confidential reporting of aviation safety or security concerns. However, in no way can we condone or support anonymous reporting. This is something we are still working on with CAA.

Finally, with the busy season approaching I encourage everyone to ensure they are not overworked, stressed or under pressure. We all want to see as much recovery from the impact of the pandemic as possible – but not at any cost. Stay fit to work and ensure your colleagues do as well.