Fatigue during Long-Haul Flights of Different Crew Compositions under Exemption from Layover and Flight Time during COVID-19.

Pilot fatigue and alertness are critical for civil aviation safety. Intercontinental pilots are more prone to fatigue and sleepiness due to jet lag, prolonged workdays, and disrupted rhythms. The Civil Aviation Administration of China excused enlarged flight crews from mandatory layovers and reimposed flight duration restrictions during COVID-19. This study investigates the sleep quality and attentional performance of pilots on intercontinental flights. The fifteen pilots who performed intercontinental flights in different crew compositions wore a body movement recorder, which has been proven to accurately estimate sleep duration and sleep efficiency. The crew's attentional performance and self-report were monitored at specified flight phases. In conclusion, the larger crews slept longer and more efficiently on board, particularly pilots in charge of takeoff and landing responsibilities. Crews on four-pilot layover flights were more alert before the takeoff of the inbound flights than exempt flights, but there was no significant difference towards the end of the mission. The new long-haul flight organization did not result in fatigue or decreased attention in the pilots. This study expands on the research by validating a novel intercontinental flight operation model under the COVID-19 scenario and highlighting critical spots for future fatigue management in various crew compositions.

Crew Fatigue Risk Analysis of Three Intercontinental Flights from China during the COVID-19 Epidemic Period

Fatigue leads to the decrease of the flight crew's alertness, which will seriously affect the flight safety. In order to avoid the risk of infection caused by the overnight stay abroad of the air crew during the Covid-19 epidemic, CAAC proposed an exemption method to release the flight time restriction of regulation by increasing the number of flight crew and setting up an independent rest area on international flights. Based on the alertness energy theory, this paper simulates the crew alertness of three international scheduled flights of China Southern Airlines, including Guangzhou - Amsterdam, Guangzhou - Los Angeles, and Guangzhou - Sydney, to compare the difference of crew alertness between '3 sets of flight crew, without overnight rest' in accordance with exemption condition, and '2 sets of flight crew, with overnight rest' in accordance with regulation condition. The simulation results show that for the Guangzhou - Amsterdam and Guangzhou - Los Angeles flights, the cockpit alertness under the exemption condition is similar to that under the regulation condition, and the fatigue risk is acceptable;for the 'Guangzhou-Sydney' flight, because the return flight under the exemption condition is always in the negative range of human rhythm, the alertness is lower than that under the regulation condition. © 2021 IEEE.

Pandemic of Covid-19 as Global Entropy: When Shannon Theory fits To-Date Data of New Infections

It is well-known that Coronavirus has been propagated due to human activities mainly based at intercontinental flights. Thus, in the first months of 2020, most new countries have already presented peaks in the number of infections, so that airports and borders were closed. With the social restrictions imposed along the beginning of second semester of 2020, the curve of cases of infections has exhibited to be flat in comparison to the beginning of 2020. Therefore, the human activities of end-of-year 2020 have caused againg peaks as the second wave of the pandemic in most countries. So far, by the end of 2021, most countries particularly located at Europe, are exhibiting the fourth wave. In this paper, the entropy of Shannon is considered as inherent mechanism and responsible of waves and large peaks of the number of infections. Modelling of data, the results of this paper suggest the inherent presence of a global entropy due to the transfer of randomness between neighboring countries. © 2021 IEEE.