Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER June 12, 2017 6 NEWS mercer.ca @MercerCanada C o n g r a t u l a t i o n s t o o u r n e w P a r t n e r s o n h e l p i n g t o a d v a n c e t h e H e a l t h , W e a l t h a n d C a r e e r s o f e m p l o y e e s a c r o s s C a n a d a . I N T R O D U C I N G T H E N E W E S T P A R T N E R S A T M E R C E R C A N A D A François Dalceggio Partner Wealth Business Montreal Ilana Hechter Partner Career Business Toronto Jillian Kennedy Partner Wealth Business Toronto H E A LT H W E A LT H C A R E E R Lori Park Partner Market Leader Wealth Business Halifax Airline pilots call for safer skies regulations Seeking update to rules on fl ying time, fatigue BY JOHN DUJAY AIRLINE PILOT groups are urging Canada's federal transport ministry to update regulations around fatigue and fl ying time. More than 8,000 passenger and cargo pilots have launched Safer- Skies.ca, an online campaign to encourage the ministry to pub- lish updated guidelines govern- ing such things as the maximum hours a pilot should be in the air. "We're looking to motivate the government to make the right decision and put safety fi rst," said Capt. Matt Hogan, a board mem- ber and pilot with the Air Canada Pilots Association (ACPA) in Toronto. "We've been mired in a multi- year regulatory process since 2010 and we've been advocating for an update to the fatigue rules based on accepted scientifi c evidence." e Air Line Pilots Associa- tion, International, Unifor and Teamsters Canada also joined in the eff ort. But the government is work- ing with industry to develop new rules for fl ight-crew fatigue and fl ight-duty time, and it's getting close to publishing these, accord- ing to Aaron McCrorie, director of standards at Transport Canada in Ottawa. In March, the ministry circulat- ed a notice of intent that outlined "probably about 90 to 95 per cent of what you are going to see in the fi nal rules package," he said. The next step, according to McCrorie, is a review by a cabi- net committee, before the rules become the regulations for the Canadian airline industry. Time-of-day rules One of the areas of concern is ex- actly when a fl ight takes off , said Hogan. "Our biggest concern is in re- gard to time-of-day sensitivity when it comes to aircraft depart- ing between 5 p.m. and midnight." Currently, pilots are allowed to fl y long-haul fl ights at night for 12.5 hours or longer, according to the ACPA. e draft regulations call for 10.5 hours, but this is still not suffi cient, said Hogan. "Our opinion — based upon NASA research — is that a duty period starting after 5 p.m. through midnight should only be 10 hours which would allow for eight-and-a-half hours of fl ight time actually at the controls." e rules will best refl ect the re- ality that bodies react diff erently at diff erent times, said McCrorie. " ey're cut and dry, they are going to tell operators the maxi- mum (depending on your start time) of how many hours you can work in a given day." A fl ight that begins in the mid- dle of the night can make it much harder for a pilot to perform at an optimal state, according to experts. "If you don't sleep at the same time every day because of your work schedule, then your circadi- an rhythms becomes out of whack or desynchronized to the external time-givers like the clock, eating time, socializing, awake time and light," said Clinton Marquardt, a fatigue specialist in Ottawa. "If you are sleeping at all sorts of times — which often happens in the aviation world — your body then tries to adapt to your new sleeping time and, of course, these people are never sleeping at the same time every day," he said. But because internal biological rhythms are no longer synchro- nized, "your core temperature could drop at some unexpected time if your circadian rhythm is all out of whack," said Marquardt. Overnight work can also sap a worker's energy, according to Carolyn Schur, a sleep expert at HR consulting fi rm Schur Goode Associates in Saskatoon. "Because you are working through the night — which is your natural sleep time — working through that time consumes more of your energy than you would if you were working during the day." If a fl ight starts at 2 a.m. as op- posed to 2 p.m., it means sleepi- ness is a natural outcome, she said. "If a pilot is on a fl ight that is 10 hours, what kind of rest breaks does he or she get in that time?" e safe thing to do is to allow a nap, said Schur, because "nobody can maintain alertness over the course of 12 hours." But ensuring pilots get adequate breaks is easier said than done. "When you are in an aircraft at 3 a.m., you can't just pull over to the side of the road and rest," said Hogan. "When you are dealing with a 24-7 operation like avia- tion, you have to be mindful of the human physiology and a big portion of fatigue is the fact you have to deal with the reality of your circadian rhythm." A possible solution could be mandating airlines to have extra staff on board to spell off a pilot. "If a pilot's fl ying at night, then there's going to be a reduced work period unless you have augmenta- tion on board, (which are) addi- tional pilots to provide for the fact that you are working through the night," said Hogan. Diff erent rules for diff erent pilots e pilots' associations are also concerned the ministry doesn't plan to roll out the new rules for all pilots. "We want to make sure that the government doesn't carve out other areas of the industry, par- ticularly cargo and the smaller op- erators under air taxi," said Hogan. "Those individuals, they are human beings; they have the same physiology and they suff er the same eff ects of fatigue, just like any other pilot would. ere should be one level of safety for all Canadians on all the airlines so (they) aren't competing on safety." However, the government said it does not want a one-size-fi ts-all approach. "We recognize that (we have) unique operations in this coun- try — medevac, cargo operations — that don't fit into the usual scheduled model and they may have problems complying with those new prescriptive rules," said McCrorie. e ministry plans to intro- duce fatigue risk management systems for these other airlines, he said, to provide an alternate regulatory scheme that would al- low operators to manage fatigue proactively. For instance, specialty air ser- vices such as crop dusters or aerial photographers will not be subject to the same regulations, he said. "Given their safety record and the nature of their operations, we didn't feel that they needed the same regulatory requirements as people carrying fare-paying passengers." Fatigue like drunkenness Despite efforts to help manage fatigue, sometimes a tired body has other ideas. "If you are very sleepy, you need to sleep because especially in safety-sensitive situations like (those involving) pilots, you are subject to what are called micro-sleeps: Literally, your body is going to put you to sleep, whether you want to or not," said Carolyn Schur, a sleep expert at Schur Goode Associates in Saskatoon. "The dangerous thing about it is you don't have awareness that this is happening." When a person starts hitting 17 or 18 hours of wakefulness, a lot of her skills and performance parallel having a blood alcohol level of 0.5 per cent, said Clinton Marquardt, a fatigue specialist based in Ottawa. Studies have shown "people who were essentially drunk were driving very similar to people who were driving with limited sleep or were awake for too long," he said. Fatigue is being recognized as a main reason for airline crashes. "We've identifi ed at Transport Canada our top safety risks and human factors — which include fatigue — as one of our top safety risks," said Aaron McCrorie, director of standards at Transport Canada in Ottawa. "Our analysis of accidents — both domestically and internationally — have pointed to fatigue as a contributing factor in about 21 accidents since 2004." The effect of tiredness in the workplace is becoming more accepted, said Marquardt. "If you think about some of the skills that are required to fl y an aircraft well, the fi rst thing (is) you've got to be able to make decisions quickly, so reaction time gets affected." "Essentially, most of the skills that a pilot needs are sensitive to fatigue, and that's where the real problems come in," he said. A 2004 crash in Ontario saw a pilot wrongly make a decision to fl y in a fatigued state, said Marquardt. The pilot experienced icing, the plane was overweight, and it crashed into the icy waters of Lake Erie, causing 10 fatalities. "In this pilot's case, he wasn't extremely fatigued: We calculated he had maybe fi ve hours of sleep the night before this fl ight," he said. "The research showed that just one night of fi ve hours or less sleep and you start to see some reliable- performance detriments — things like poor problem-solving, wrong decision-making. As you become a bit more fatigued, the higher cognitive processes start to deteriorate."

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