submission - Independent Pilots Association

So those are the three main things. These are established facts. I don't think the
scientific evidence is conclusive and those are the things we take into
consideration when we try to apply the knowledge to the practical or operational
situation. Any questions on that?
People say, "Can you accumulate a debt for a year?" We don't know because
those studies haven't been done. But there's no evidence whatsoever that says
"No, it levels off," or "No, it changes." All the evidence says that you keep
accumulating a debt as long as you keep losing sleep below your specific daily
requirement. There's no evidence that you can change this. I suppose you
could ski or play basketball as opposed to just sit in a hot room and that would
make a little difference but that doesn't change your sleep requirement.
Anybody got any questions?
I've got a question. Napping: does that in any way alleviate the sleep debt?
Let's say you have a 4O-hour sleep debt and you have a ten-minute nap. So now
your sleep debt might be 39 hours and 50 minutes. lt wouldn't rnake any
difference there. A lot of the napping is done after lunch. Most people, and
especially younger people - and I don't know what the average age is in this
group -
but younger people have strong clock-dependent alerting late in the day.
So you have sort of an illusion. You happen to take a nap just before the clock
turns on. ls the alerting partly a result of the nap or not? Mostly not, but I would
say until proven othenryise that a nap, if it is good sleep (which it usually isn't) is
minute per_minute doing what sleep would do, but it's usually nowhere near the
total añ'õffifttrat you require.
Dr. Dement, I haae a list of questions tlnt pertain to our task of helpit:g to define flight
time and duty time regulations and i.f I could just talce the liberty of asking these
particular questions and open up the -floor.for nny otlrcr rentaining qurltons thnt other
people may lut,e. One of the most basic tnsls is for us to ngree on n retLlntnrcndntion for ct
sleeys opportunity,. . .. to afford euery reser?e pilot the opportunity of a ,-'rotected time
period so that he or she is absolutely insulated from contact from ¡þs ¡"'7'=tator. Hott'
many hours do yort recommend for a ntinimum fired sleeys opportunitv?
I will start out by assuming that we would take 8 hours of sleep as the most
common requirement. Then you need to add to that in order to be able to get the
proper amount of sleep. ln your situation, I would think it would be a little larger
than it might be for someone who really wasn't doing anything. Sc I'd add a
couple of hours to get the proper amount of sleep.
Are there anu.findings as far as the nntount o.f sleep /oss or the nhilitu :-' :leep during le:s
tlrntt desirable times of the dnv nnd u'lt¡t n p¿rson coul,l erLtect?