Pilots at Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines say pilot exhaustion is the No. 1 safety issue facing air travelers as cockpit crews grapple with staffing shortages and long hours.
“Fatigue, both acute and cumulative, has become Southwest Airlines’ number-one safety threat,” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, or SWAPA, said in a letter to the carrier.
Pilots say they’re whipped, stressed and generally run down by flight cancellations and rising demand for air travel.
CNN, citing data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, says the top airlines are about 3,000 employees short of staffing levels seen prior to the pandemic.
This is due in part to thousands of pilots retiring either because of mandatory age limits or because they’re just sick of the whole thing.
“A lot of our delays and issues that we’re having have to do more with scheduling and connecting pilots with airplanes,” SWAPA President Casey Murray told CNN. “It is inefficient scheduling processes that are affecting when we work in a very dynamic environment.”
Federal rules say pilots can fly 30 hours each week and must receive a minimum nine hours of rest between shifts.
But pilots say their shifts have become more stressful because of staffing issues, cancellations and bad weather.
Pilots from all carriers filed dozens of reports of mistakes or other incidents involving fatigue to the federal Aviation Safety Reporting System last year.
“Both of us were yawning and eye rubbing halfway through our 6+ hour flight,” one captain wrote in November. “I was physically unable to keep up.”
I think we can all agree that this isn’t acceptable for the people responsible for keeping nearly 500 tons of aircraft cruising 30,000 feet above the ground — with, by the way, hundreds of passengers hoping for the best. ktla.com
