Ground_Support_August_2020 - 21

GROUND SERVICE
PROVIDERS

To specifically fight misfuelling, Talley encourages the Phillips 66 network
of FBOs to utilize their free "Save a Life
- Verify Fuel Type" heart decals and keychains to serve as a visual reminder to both
pilots and FBO staff to pay attention and
communicate with each other.
"Our hope is that by seeing these visual
reminders, pilots and employees slow
down, communicate and pay attention,"
he says.

Fighting Fatigue
Dr. Daniel Mollicone is CEO and
co-founder of Pulsar Informatics, which
makes fatigue meters for aviation and
other industries. The fatigue meters work
by monitoring the fatigue of employees,
allowing organizations to take the right
steps to prevent fatigue-related incidents
before they occur.
"We're looking at the work rest pattern.
And we're looking for situations where the
pattern of work is not compatible with the
biology. It's either too long or it's at night or
too many successive days in a row without
adequate sleep opportunity. We rate every
hour on duty with the fatigue score and the
higher the score, the worse it is. So, zero
Photo courtesy of Phillips 66

matter, but also the quality. Someone who
gets the right amount of sleep but spends
the night tossing and turning can end up
just as fatigued as someone who slept too
little - resulting in the same dangers.
"The part of the brain that's impacted
the most by lack of sleep is what's called the
frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain
directly behind the forehead. And that's the
part of the brain that's responsible for what
we call executive functioning," she says.
"You think about what an executive does
in a company, they take in large amounts of
information, they sort through it all, they
figure out what's important and they make
decisions and they use judgment and they
have to remember things.
"So, you have to have short term, immediate memory recall. And you have to be
able to have sustained focused attention
to problem solve. All of those processes
are controlled by that area of the brain
and research has shown that's the area of
the brain that's most directly impacted by
insufficient sleep," Gurubhagavatula says,
continuing on the dangers of poor sleep.
That all results in a reduction in workplace performance and, ultimately, workplace safety.
"Ground handling is a job that requires
a lot of attention and maintaining that
attention requires you to be well rested and
focused," Michael France, NATA's managing director of safety and training, says.
"Fatigue greatly increases the chances of
damage to aircraft, company equipment and
personal injury," adds Bo Ballard, VP of
operations, Tri-State Aero. "Productivity
decreases, mistakes are made and wrong or
incorrect information can be passed down
at shift change."
One of the major risk-areas regarding
fatigue is misfuelling.
"Every misfuelling incident has a few
common themes. Human errors like miscommunication, lack of knowledge, lack
of awareness, and certainly fatigue and
distractions play a major role in misfuelling incidents, which can be deadly. If
an employee is tired on the ramp, they're
likely not focused and not communicating as much as they should be," explains
Joshua Talley, quality director, Phillips 66
Aviation.

to eight is nominal; eight to 12, is the caution zone; and above 12 is elevated fatigue,"
Mollicone explains.
The fatigue meter allows an organization to set a threshold that they don't
want employees working above without
appropriate risk controls. For example, if
an employee hits a 12 on the fatigue meter,
an organization can address the fatigued
employee's needs while possibly preventing
an accident.
"You can have them transition away
from safety sensitive tasks, or you can have
them take a break, possibly a nap, or go offduty early," says Mollicone. "Whatever it is
that you do, you don't want to just ignore it
because what we found based on the epidemiological data is that when a worker is at
an elevated fatigue level, they're anywhere
from two to five times more likely to be
involved in an incident. And you have that
information beforehand, before the incident occurs and you have an opportunity
to do something about it."
Maintaining a proper work rest balance
is a key factor to reducing accidents on the
ramp, Ballard agrees.
"Refrain from asking an employee to pull
a double shift due to someone calling in.
They may seem fine at the start, but after
a few hours, fatigue normally sets in. Also,
try to give employees a consistent work
schedule that includes two consecutive
days off in a row," he says.
France says the breakdown of a proper
work rest balance is something he has personally experienced.
"I worked in the FBO world for many
years before coming to NATA, pulled
many double shifts and sometimes worked
24 hours straight early in my career just
because of poor weather that prevented
people from getting to work or people
sick or whatever it was. As an organization you've got to, I think, begin to have
that conversation internally. Yeah there
are going to be times where you're going to
ask people to work over or ask them to pick
up an extra shift. Are their mitigations that
should be put in place? Is there any hard
limit where beyond this a person cannot
work? Those are all types of questions I
think an organization should be asking
itself," France says.

AUGUST 2020

AviationPros.com

http://www.AviationPros.com

Ground_Support_August_2020

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