Devine, J.K.; Choynowski, J.; Garcia, C.R.; Simoes, A.S.; Guelere, M.R.; Godoy, B. de; Silva, D.S.; Pacheco, P.; Hursh, S.R. Pilot Sleep Behavior across Time during Ultra-Long-Range Flights. Clocks & Sleep 2021, 3, 515–527, doi:10.3390/clockssleep3040036.
Devine, J.K.; Choynowski, J.; Garcia, C.R.; Simoes, A.S.; Guelere, M.R.; Godoy, B. de; Silva, D.S.; Pacheco, P.; Hursh, S.R. Pilot Sleep Behavior across Time during Ultra-Long-Range Flights. Clocks & Sleep 2021, 3, 515–527, doi:10.3390/clockssleep3040036.
Devine, J.K.; Choynowski, J.; Garcia, C.R.; Simoes, A.S.; Guelere, M.R.; Godoy, B. de; Silva, D.S.; Pacheco, P.; Hursh, S.R. Pilot Sleep Behavior across Time during Ultra-Long-Range Flights. Clocks & Sleep 2021, 3, 515–527, doi:10.3390/clockssleep3040036.
Devine, J.K.; Choynowski, J.; Garcia, C.R.; Simoes, A.S.; Guelere, M.R.; Godoy, B. de; Silva, D.S.; Pacheco, P.; Hursh, S.R. Pilot Sleep Behavior across Time during Ultra-Long-Range Flights. Clocks & Sleep 2021, 3, 515–527, doi:10.3390/clockssleep3040036.
Abstract
Fatigue risk to commercial pilots operating under global pandemic conditions had not been in-vestigated prior to COVID-19. Examining how pilots slept during COVID-19 pandemic-specific flights can provide a precedent for estimating fatigue risk for future public health emergencies. Twenty (n=20) pilots flying across five COVID-19 humanitarian missions between Brazil and China wore a sleep-tracking device (the Zulu watch), which has been validated for the estimation of sleep timing (sleep onset and offset), duration, efficiency, and sleep depth (Wake, Interrupted, Light, or Deep Sleep) throughout the mission period. Pilots also reported sleep timing, duration and subjective quality of their in-flight rest periods using a sleep diary. To our knowledge, this is the first report of commercial pilot sleep behavior during ultra-long-range operations under COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Moreover, these analyses provide an estimate of sleep depth during in-flight sleep, which has not been reported previously in the literature.
Keywords
sleep depth; sleep duration; sleep timing; time zones; COVID-19; aviation
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.