Pilot incapacitation occurrences 2010–2014

Background
Pilots are required to maintain medical certificates as part of their licencing
requirements. However, occasionally pilots still become incapacitated during flight.
In-flight incapacitations can result from a variety of reasons. These include the
development of an acute medical condition, changes in environmental conditions
during the flight, or the effects of a pre-existing medical condition. The effect of
incapacitation on a pilot’s duties varies. Effects on duty include restricting their flight
duties to a pilot monitoring role, or in severe cases, the need to be removed from
the flight deck for the remainder of the flight. While air transport operations involve
multi-pilot operations, which will act as a safety net if one crew member becomes
incapacitated, other aircraft operations may only have one pilot. This makes any
potential incapacitation a higher risk for single-pilot operations.
Between 2010 and 2014, there were a total of 113 flight crew incapacitation
occurrences reported to the ATSB (23 per year on average). This report documents
flight crew incapacitation incidents, serious incidents, and accidents within high
capacity air transport operations, low capacity air transport operations, and general
aviation that occurred in Australia or on VH-registered aircraft overseas.