Fatigue in the Cockpit

This is about YOU – Your safety as a passenger.

When boarding an airplane, you want your basic right to a safe flight be guaranteed. This is what the EU must ensure – through strict science-based flight safety rules. And yet, it does NOT.

For over 3 years, European airlines and their lobby organisations in Brussels have been lobbying for lax safety rules on pilot fatigue. Their motive: reduce costs by making their pilots fly longer.

However, scientific evidence points to a different direction:  strict rules that ensure pilots are sufficiently alert to operate safely even at the end of a long duty day and under the most demanding circumstances.

This scientific evidence had been completely ignored by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), who presented a first proposal for EU-wide fatigue rules, in Dec. 2010. The airline lobby had been successful.

Even the revised proposal of Jan. 2012 still has a long way to go to take science into account. The new proposal still reflects the commercial interest of the airlines, and if not changed, the new rules will reduce safety levels in large parts of Europe. In particular those EU countries that have high safety standards today, will see their standards lowered down to the level of the new EASA rules.

The EU must change direction and provide Europe’s travelling public with the protection it deserves. We cannot afford to wait for a fatal accident to take safety seriously!