Pilots are allowed to sleep during flight, but strict rules control this practice. Pilots would only normally sleep on long-haul flights, although sleep on short-haul flights is permitted to avoid the effects of fatigue. Pilot rest can be separated into two categories; ‘Controlled Rest’ where the pilot sleeps whilst in the cockpit at the controls, or ‘Bunk Rest’ where sleep or rest is taken either in the passenger cabin (in a seat reserved for the pilot) or in the dedicated crew ‘bunk’ beds available on long haul aircraft. Controlled rest allows one pilot at a time to get up to 45 minutes of sleep during periods of low workload (on the cruise). This is to promote higher alertness levels during periods of high workload, for example, the descent, approach, and landing. The principle of controlled rest is to allow the pilots to boost alertness and energy. It’s the equivalent of a “power nap”. Ideally controlled rest should be around 10 – 20 minutes as this limits you to the lighter stages of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Sleeps between 30 and 60 minutes can result in sleep inertia when you wake up, which will leave you feeling groggy similar to a hangover. Naturally, the pilots would sleep normally overnight on Sunday (although may have operated that day too) into Monday and they would try to either lay in or go back to sleep in the early evening for a couple of hours before reporting for duty depending on how long their commute is. Effectively they are losing one night’s sleep. Two pilots are operating a night flight to Tenerife from Manchester. The report time for work is 8:00 p.m. on Monday, the flight is planned to leave Manchester at 21:00 with a block time (flight time and taxi time at both ends) of 04:30 giving a scheduled landing time of 01:30. The turnaround time is 1 hour meaning the return flight departs at 02:30. Again it’s a block time of 04:30 back to Manchester giving a scheduled landing time of 07:00, the pilots would then be off duty at 07:30 and have to drive home. This is all if the flights are running on schedule.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!