Pilots performance and flight safety: flight physiology in unpressurized aircraft cabins

• Autor(a) principal: Zorro, Sara Marques
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/2002
• topic: Aviação ligeira

Light aviation pilots are exposed to many different environmental situations due to the nonpressurized and non-acclimatized aircraft cabin. Some of those variations can push the human body to some limits, which associated with psychological factors may culminate in incidentes or even fatalities. Actually, a literature review on this theme suggests that a significant part of the incidents and fatalities, within the light aviation that uses non-pressurized aircraft cabins, are related to the human factor. This analysis might bring up a concealed but significant and worrying phenomenon in terms of flight safety: changes of pilot performance in the amendment of psychological and physiological parameters, concerning to diferente stress levels and to pressure variations during the various flight stages, respectively. This may be a concerning situation due to the disparity of human body reaction between diferente pilots to the same flight conditions. Nature, both in terms of environmental factors, as pressure and temperature, or in human physiological and psychological behaviour, during the different flight phases, is unpredictable. Therefore, it is very difficult to establish safety boundaries. This study general objective is to analyse the influence of flight environmental conditions and pilots psychophysiological parameters on task performance, during different flight situations, considering some of his everyday habits. To this end, a statistical analysis of a survey, regarding specific questions about the need for pilot’s attention monitoring systems, was made, and, in parallel, a portable and ergonomic monitoring system was built. This system equipment records cerebral oximetry, to study the hypoxia phenomenon and its importance, electrocardiography (ECG), and electroencephalography (EEG), in order to establish a correlation between the influence of mental workload and other physiological parameters during different flight stages. The specific purpose of this study is to define physiological limits for each pilot, through simulation tests contemplating different flight scenarios, in order to create an on board alert system to prevent possible incidents. With this research is also intended to suggest that a potential restriction on pilots licensing legislation for light aviation, within physiological limits definitions, would be a positive contribution to a safer flight environment.