CQUniversity
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Flight hours and flight crew performance in commercial aviation

journal contribution
posted on 2017-12-06, 00:00 authored by M Todd, Matthew ThomasMatthew Thomas
OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between a pilot's flight hours and their performance. BACKGROUND: There is current debate in the aviation industry on the minimum hours required for first officers to gain before they can fly for an airline. Despite years of pilot training and licensing, there are very little data available to determine whether or not pilot performance varies as a function of total hours within an airline environment. METHOD: Flight crew performance was measured during 287 sectors of normal operations against a set of technical and nontechnical measurements. Flightcrew were grouped into a categorical variable which defined low and high experience groups according to industry accepted thresholds. RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between experience groups for First Officers or Captains against the set of technical measures; however, there were minor differences with regard to nontechnical measures as a function of crew composition. There was also a difference in automation use, with First Officers with less than 1500 h keeping the autopilot engaged until a significantly lower altitude. DISCUSSION: Despite on-going debate that low-hour First Officers are not as capable as their more experienced colleagues, we found no evidence of this in our study.

Funding

Category 1 - Australian Competitive Grants (this includes ARC, NHMRC)

History

Volume

83

Issue

8

Start Page

776

End Page

782

Number of Pages

7

ISSN

0095-6562

Location

United States

Publisher

Aerospace Medical Association

Language

en-aus

Peer Reviewed

  • Yes

Open Access

  • No

External Author Affiliations

Centre for Sleep Research;

Era Eligible

  • Yes

Journal

Aviation, space and environmental medicine.

Usage metrics

    CQUniversity

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC