Should Pilots be Allowed to Nap During Flights?

Oct. 14, 2009 — -- Have you ever been truly sleep deprived? I'm talking "walking zombie" -- as in, really, really tired. Know what that's like?

Parents of newborns do. So do college students pulling an "all-nighter" before a big exam.

And so does a woman who prefers to remain anonymous, for reasons you'll soon see.

One of her toughest and most tiring experiences was the time she put in back-to-back 16 hour work days: "I was so physically exhausted I could barely lift my water bottle."

Fortunately, she was still mentally sharp enough to manage some pretty sophisticated controls, and good thing, too, because the woman is an airline pilot -- and tired as she was, she still had more routes to fly.

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It's a crazy system: the current Federal Aviation Administration rule states that pilots can work up to 16 hours a day, including up to eight hours of flight time during that period.

Think about it: that means pilots sometimes have just eight hours to go from the airport to home or hotel (and back again), eat a meal, shower, maybe unwind with a little TV.

Not much time left for sleep, is there? It's easy to understand why pilots sometimes simply get tired.

And sometimes they get too tired -- like the two Go! Airlines pilots who were flying from Honolulu to Hilo about 18 months ago and overshot their landing by 15 miles because both men fell asleep.

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Perhaps those pilots should have called in "sick" that day, or at least "fatigued." But they didn't. Other pilots do. It would be nice, though, if that was a decision pilots never had to make.

What can be done about this? Maybe the same thing kids in kindergarten do: get in some nap time.