About half of pilots questioned in a survey designed to evaluate the safety culture within European airlines say their employers do not take pilot fatigue as a serious issue.
According to a report on the survey, released in November by The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Eurocontrol, 51 percent of the 7,239 pilots questioned said that fatigue was not taken seriously by their airlines.
In what report authors said was the largest survey ever of commercial pilots on issues of safety culture, 28 percent said the staff was insufficient to safely perform their work and fewer than 20 percent said they believed that their airline cared about their well being.
“This survey presents a learning opportunity for airlines to enable the industry to build on its reputation for safety and to work with pilots and regulators to ensure that it continues to remain a safe mode of transport in the future,” said Anam Parand, an LSE researcher and coauthor of the report.