About Nauru Airlines
Nauru Airlines is the national carrier of the Republic of Nauru, and an early adopter of fatigue risk management, having first implemented the SAFTE-FAST Console back in 2016. Nauru Airlines operates under Australian rules CAO 48.1, Appendix 2 for crew fatigue management. Using SAFTE-FAST, Nauru Airlines can determine the level of fatigue risk associated with their flight schedules. The SAFTE-FAST Console also gives Nauru the ability to perform comparative schedule analysis, run reports on fatigue data across schedules, perform trend analysis, and create safety cases.
Real Time Fatigue Risk Management
The flight operations department at Nauru Airlines is a fast-paced and dynamic environment where quick decisions need to be made that consider multiple factors. “Like many facets of our industry, crew fatigue management evolves at an ever-increasing rate,” said Peter Holmes, Operations Control Center Manager at Nauru Airlines.
Fatigue is a complex state characterized by a lack of alertness and reduced mental and physical performance, often accompanied by drowsiness. Fatigue makes your alertness, mental function, and physical performance less reliable and leads to impaired performance. Most people underestimate how fatigued they are and how impaired they are by fatigue. The SAFTE-FAST model estimates sleep patterns around work duties and then evaluates performance levels, accounting for circadian function, homeostatic sleep reservoir, and sleep inertia.
Nauru Airlines required a way to perform instant fatigue analysis, especially when considering short notice charter flights. To do this, Nauru Airlines tasked Leon Software, their flight and crew scheduling vendor, and SAFTE-FAST to develop an integrated solution that meets the requirements of an on-demand charter operator. The result was the SAFTE-FAST Real Time solution, an Application Programming Interface (API) directly integrating validated SAFTE-FAST performance metrics into Leon’s powerful scheduling system.
Real Time enables crew schedulers and operations planners to perform on-the-fly fatigue analysis to support operational scheduling decisions. From right within Leon, Nauru Airlines can perform fatigue analysis on individual crewmember flights or all crewmembers over a selected time range. SAFTE-FAST metrics for Departure, Arrival, and Flight are displayed to Nauru Airlines staff, who then determine the fatigue risk level associated with their crewmember schedules.
Holmes continues, "the integration we have between SAFTE-FAST and Leon provides an additional dynamic means of keeping an eye on our crew’s potential fatigue status. The integration quickly identifies any potential issues that may occur on a proposed pairing and allows our rostering team to analyze and correct any identified issues quickly and efficiently. Using the collaboration between SAFTE-FAST, a world leader in bio-mathematical modeling of fatigue, and the intuitive and powerful Leon application we are confident that our rosters present the most efficient pairings to combat crew fatigue. Knowing we have the support of SAFTE-FAST and Leon, we remain confident that we stay on the forefront of such a crucial element in aviation safety.”
For more information about Nauru Airlines visit their website at www.nauruair.com.
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