| Vueling, the progressive Spanish low-cost carrier with their headquarter in beautiful Barcelona, has decided to add the Boeing Alertness Model (BAM) to their crew management process.
"With the addition of BAM, we are raising our ambitions for fatigue risk management even further at Vueling", says Marc Navarro, Manager Crew Rostering & Tracking. "Overall fatigue risk is possible to control mainly during pairing and roster optimization, and with our new capabilities we aim to ensure to supress and distribute risk as much as possible throughout the crewing process", he concludes.
"We are excited and proud to welcome Vueling to the family of operators using our FRM functionality", says Tomas Klemets, Head of scheduling Safety at Jeppesen. "Vueling are long-time users of our crew pairing and rostering optimizers, so adding BAM to the process is a fairly straightforward extension. We very much look forward to teaming up with them to reduce risk", he adds.
The Boeing Alertness Model is built to support crew planning optimizers in real-time, guiding the outcomes to much lower overall risk compared to what can be achieved manually. More information about the Jeppesen FRM solutions, including the Boeing Alertness Model, is found here.
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All models are wrong - but some are useful
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| In a paper (link) that was published in the proceedings of a 1978 statistics workshop the famous British statistician George Box wrote:
Now it would be very remarkable if any system existing in the real world could be exactly represented by any simple model. However, cunningly chosen parsimonious models often do provide remarkably useful approximations. For example, the law PV = nRT relating pressure P, volume V and temperature T of an "ideal" gas via a constant R is not exactly true for any real gas, but it frequently provides a useful approximation and furthermore its structure is informative since it springs from a physical view of the behavior of gas molecules. For such a model there is no need to ask the question "Is the model true?". If "truth" is to be the "whole truth" the answer must be "No". The only question of interest is "Is the model illuminating and useful?".
Box later wrote in his 1997 book, Statistical Control: By Monitoring and Feedback Adjustment (which was co-authored with Alberto Luceño):
It has been said that "all models are wrong but some models are useful." In other words, any model is at best a useful fiction—there never was, or ever will be, an exactly normal distribution or an exact linear relationship. Nevertheless, enormous progress has been made by entertaining such fictions and using them as approximations.
Putting this into context for bio-mathematical model usage for predicting fatigue in aviation, it is important to not over-rely on model output but instead take a conservative 'stance' addressing risk more broadly.
It is only too easy to fall into the trap of an inspect/re-work approach based on some made-up threshold by a model vendor meant to separate 'safe' from 'unsafe'. Please find here a high-level comparison between these inspect/re-work approaches and a process control approach that embrace model shortcomings. For more details on how to best use fatigue models throughout the crew management process, recognising they are flawed, look no further than to this document. Enjoy!
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Apple health data now also on the iPad
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| As of iOS 17, Apple have made the health data available also on the iPad. This is great news for savvy CrewAlert users. Your sleep registered by the Apple watch, an Oura ring, or any other device feeding Apple Health, will as of now not only reach CrewAlert on the iPhone, but also on the iPad.
The Boeing Alertness Model is built to automatically blend the information available. If logged sleep, and/or wakefulness, is available it will override what the model otherwise would predict. When there's no log available BAM will fill the gaps with predictions. Having actual sleep available, even if logged by a consumer device, results in much more accurate predictions when sleep is scarce.
CrewAlert is the leading FRM app for Appstore since more than a decade and contains functionality supporting fatigue reporting, data collection, modelling of what-if scenarios, analysis, fatigue risk awareness, as well as providing guidance for fatigue risk prevention and mitigations. CrewAlert is free on appstore but certain ’pro features’ will require a subscription - for a moderate fee.
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20 Tips for How to Sleep Better
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| Despite how important sleep is to physical and mental well-being, you may find it challenging to get enough quality sleep each night. The impact of poor sleep can be felt in all areas of your life.
The sleep habits you follow each day – known as sleep hygiene – can have a positive effect on how well you sleep. You have likely heard many of these tips before, but repetition being the mother of learning, and the father of action, please find here an article recapping the essentials.
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CONNECT Barcelona - Learn, Share, Listen, Engage
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| A quick look back at this year’s CONNECT which took place in Barcelona, Spain between the 26th and 28th of September:
This year’s CONNECT was our biggest yet with over 250 customers in attendance and together we explored ‘The Art of the Possible’ within aviation. In Barcelona we offered a full-range of breakout sessions, round table discussions and tech talks, where customers deep dived into a wide variety of valuable content. Attendees learned about the latest trends and product developments in aviation technology, engaged with experts and gained new ideas and best practices.
CONNECT is our annual customer event, and the primary objectives are to share many of the updates and developments that we’ve made in the past year, plus provide a unique opportunity for Digital Aviation Solutions customers to share, listen and engage with colleagues and industry leaders. So, if you missed out this year make sure to be ready for the next CONNECT.
Check out the recap video (link) from CONNECT Barcelona and see first-hand why attendees find so much value in attending.
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Are you sensing something is wrong?
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| It may be something you have taken for granted and stopped questioning long ago. Perhaps you, without being able to fully articulate it, have had a vague feeling of discomfort regarding your current FRM approach? You are not alone. Only too often we meet up with operators that use, how to put it politely..., far from ideal metrics in their FRM work. It may go something like this:
- Our main metric we track is the number of published rosters containing activities predicted by our fatigue model to be worse than a certain number. We use this metric to track improvement/deterioration over time.
- So, putting your fatiguing activities on as few rosters as possible shows you have improved?
- Eh... well... what? Hmm...
- And, knowing the shortcomings of fatigue models, would you say being just slightly better than that magic number, makes a difference to being just slightly worse?
- Of course not, but we need to draw the line somewhere. Don't we? Or? Hmm...
Having well-considered metrics is crucial, not only for follow-up but also for proactive control and reduction of risk. In terms of flight safety, an operator will be exposed to an overall level of fatigue risk which can be seen as the sum of probability over all the flights operated. All pilots will carry a small contribution to that risk, springing from the very small likelihood of reduced alertness leading in to either a lapse, slip, mistake, or violation contributing to an incident or accident. That overall exposure is what matters the most.
Take a closer look at your metrics. Are they; data-driven, based on science, reflective of risk on continuous scales, and genuinely representative? Are you sensing something is wrong?
Read more here about the best practice for quantifying fatigue risk.
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Meet up with our experts:
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| Missed out on the previous NewsFlash? It's right here.
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