Calling Fatigued Airborne?

You Can't do that! 

Last week the world listened to the recording of the Delta Captain of Fight 564 who departed on a redeye flight, lost the autopilot, autothrust, and received a TAT probe message. They wanted to return, and the argument began as to the reason why he was returning, and what was legal to say or not.

Delta Flight 564 Return

The captain said he was departing Flight Level 1500, but that could have been due to the high stress, or maybe he didn’t know when flight levels began. Airlines do not typically train this type of information any more. This is one of those new hire captains with two years on the plane, I was told two years at the company, with less than 500 hours in type. Not the point, but he now has a broken airplane, and he’s making a good decision to return.

Dispatch has them reset the circuit breakers and they get their auto pilot back, but the TAT remains inoperative, therefore they have a variety of issues as a result thereof, one being the autothrust. The TAT is the Total Air Temperature Sensor, a heated probe that is an essential for input to the air data computer for static air temperature and true airspeed and they must avoid icing condition. The autothrust is gone.

As they fly circles, after dealing with the issue of resetting circuit breakers, the captain asks dispatch, “Is there something we’re waiting for?” And the dispatcher responds by telling them about the icing conditions on the route, but says there would not be any on arrival. They must avoid icing due to the probe failure. They will also have only have 10 minutes of holding over Albany, I suspect the alternate.

Then the captain tells dispatch, “We are right at our peak circadian low and I spoke with the first officer, and we don’t believe it’s within safety to continue flying throughout the night, at this time with no autothrottles.” He does not say he is fatigued. The circadian low statement was his asserting the time of night with his body clock. He never said, “We’re fatigued.”

Dispatch says, “Okay if you want to return because of fatigue, I can call the duty pilot to get him on the line.” The dispatcher apparently did not understand what the captain said, and was told that the duty pilot must give permission to call in fatigued. He wasn’t actually calling in fatigued.

PROBLEM BEGINS

They can’t get the duty pilot on the line, so they decide to land anyway. Then the duty pilot jumps on and the conversation degrades, opening preponderance of discussion amongst those who have listened to the audio.

You need to listen to this video yourself. But basically these are the questionable statements:

Duty pilot says, “Okay, this is new to me. You’re calling in fatigued airborne?”

“I’m confused with this fatigue versus a mechanical issue.”

The captain tries to explain.

Duty pilot says, “Okay umm… being that you’re airborne I would highly suggest that you not say that you’re fatigued for operation and more for mechanical situation I’m not sure how we can report you’re operating in a fatigued condition.”

He was not reporting in a fatigued condition. However, if he had been fatigued… why can’t a pilot report that in flight? I would hope that my pilots, if fatigued in flight, would want to land instead of falling asleep on final five hours later.

Additional Factors

Time of Day and Delay:

The crew was delayed out of San Francisco. This was a redeye flight. If you fly at night, your pilots will experience more fatigue than in the day. They are flying opposite to their body clock and there is no way they will be rested as if they had a good night sleep and awoke in the morning to fly. This flight had only have two pilots versus the four pilot international flights where pilots can sleep half the time.

Mechanical issue:

No auto thrust, no TAT and associated failed equipment, and a potential for the autopilot circuit breakers to blow again. Personally I would not take the flight.

History:

Delta had a 757-redeye flight out of Seattle, diverted for a medical. Then continued to Atlanta and both pilots fell asleep on arrival. The first officer awoke because the gear warning screamed as the plane flew toward the ground with gear up. They should have called fatigued on the divert.

A Delta Captain departed a daytime, three-hour, flight into Atlanta, in a 737, without an autopilot and autothrust. After three hours of flight, he then declared an emergency. Delta made a training video encouraging pilots to declare an emergency if they lose automation, because they have data that shows Delta pilots as a whole cannot fly without the automation. When questioned about this event retired FAA administrator, Steve Dickson the SVP of flight operations at the time, asserted, “It gives the impression that we are going to place operational requirements above safety requirements. It probably would have been a better decision to turn the airplane around and get it repaired.”

Yet, on this flight, they are encouraging them to continue.

Discussion

Some think the duty pilot was protecting the captain by trying to get him not to say he was fatigued while airborne. Protection from what? Others hear the duty pilot telling him to lie. Some think the captain would get in trouble by the FAA by using those words, but I can’t see it.

First, this is clearly no time for argument.

The decision this captain made, with solid rationale, was the safest course of action and could have ended there. But it was the dispatcher who used the words “fatigued” and led him down the wrong path telling him he had to speak to the duty pilot. This was an unnecessary discussion, and droning around the sky arguing over semantics was ridiculous. This captain never said he was fatigued. He said it would be fatiguing at this time of night to fly across country, after a long delay out of San Francisco due to the midnight hour, and his circadian clock without autothrust.

Regardless, no airline should challenge any pilot to discuss fatigue while flying. And for the duty pilot, yes… fatigue does happen in the sky. Been there, done that. And the FAA is never going to fault this crew for mitigating risk prior to the end of a flight.

Listen to the video and let me know what you think.