At the end of February, Jeppesen attended the European Business Aviation Safety Conference in Vienna. We presented our story on how we use predictive fatigue models to improve crew scheduling in commercial aviation. Throughout the event, we collected feedback on how our approach could be applied to the business aviation domain and its special requirements. Many interesting conversations took place; with pilots, managers, safety experts, researchers and other vendors.
Pictured here are Jonathan Frey of ASQS, a Vienna-based Safety
Management System vendor, and Captain David Grundström of Bluelink, a
Scandinavian business jet operator. Captain Grundström had the following to say
on managing fatigue in business aviation:
"Unlike working in a traditional airline, every day brings a unique and often surprising flight schedule for a business aviation pilot. We don't have the operational luxury of having tested out our work-pattern hundreds of times in the past. At the same time, we are purveyors of a high-end service, so our customers naturally expect us to go above and beyond in service and flexibility, often at short notice. Having access to independent, objective and well-validated fatigue predictions on short notice, could help in multiple ways. Our back-office would get support in making the best decisions for who flies what, when and where, and as pilots we gain increased awareness of what we have ahead of us."
Jeppesen have a couple of FRM solutions particularly well suited for business aviation; Jeppesen Concert for the monitoring and analysis of the overall operation, and CrewAlert for data collection and fatigue risk awareness and prevention by the crew.
