submission - Independent Pilots Association

Yes. The less sleep you have the harder it is. period.
so, in other words, if we zuere forced to accept by the rulemaking offæ these longn
periods of duty in excess of 1.6 hours or 74 hours, then ¡t woull bîhooue the agency to
Iook at p_roaiding pilots with as much rest as possible to prepare themseltes ¡oi tt "i typ,
of duty?
Absolutely- When you've been in this business as long as I have, to think that
anyone could even think of the opposite is ....
l'm-assuming that it's.mythology that if a person can't sleep, thnt the person tries to sleep
and just lies thne and does nothing and stares at the ceiling and count sheep or
whateaer, does thnt haae any type of restoratioe abilities?
There's no evidence that anything but sleep has any restorative value. years and
years ago people thought physical rest was important. But in a kind of normal
range of human activities, only sleep is. Obviously you can get muscle strain and
run 50 miles you're going to be in the hospital, bui iest is useless in terms of
substituting for sleep.
Dr. Dement, there's one area that touched ttpon at this point and I
don't want to miss.. Tlæse are que he maintenance of circadian stabitity.
In your opinion, why is maintaini lity so important?
Well because usually... and by that you mean ygu¿Sþep opportunities and your
lvake
opportunities are in a period of stability,-then youhavè the best sleep ánd
the best wake. If you get out of that cycle, then both-sleep and wake will be
impaired.
Well, u'hen I think about that in the context of uthnt we're trying to insttre in ottr
reconmtettdations,.. T.þe're trying to insure that the protected titie period, the rest period,
stayed the same from day to day, assuming the resei:nse
that ntatter when he is called, he goes baci into his cyct
hint bnck to as close to that original cucle and, mnintàin
day ' NASA has findings on tlut. Their recomntendation zoas to maintnin that circarlin,
stabilitr¡ ¡slus or minus 3 hours. Do vou agree or clisagree?
i absolutely agree that's better than no stability. Obr-iously the smaller that
number, the better. I think practicallv it couldn't be zero,but I think we tend to
feel there's kind of a dailv flexibilitlv u'ithin that range, like 0 to 3 hours ,0 to 2
To
lrours go outside of that is, again, inviting u .or,äition of sleep deprivation.
So deliberately creating a bad situation.
Whnt lrap¡tens to the body as yott clunge n person's ct¡ck?
16