Human Factors in the Airbus A340 Minimum Crew Certification Campaign

Abstract

During the certification campaign of the new aircraft Airbus A340, a French-German collaboration investigated biomedical factors related to minimum 2-crew long-haul transmeridian operations. Data were collected from 8 pilots operating on rotations CDG-SFO and NCE-SIN. Flight time for the minimum crew was between 10.5 and 13.5 h. DLR-studies were carried out on sleep, motor activity, saliva cortisol and self-rating tests. Sleep was substantially disrupted by transmeridian crossings and night flights. Furthermore, sleep duration was reduced due to short layover times. Taskload and fatigue increased, and cortisol concentration became elevated with ongoing flight duty. It is concluded that the main contribution to potentially impairing factors affecting the human element in the cockpit are not merely the tasks of controlling and guiding the aircraft, but to a greater extent the organizational and evironmentalconditions, i.e. duration of flight duty, transmeridian and night flights, length of layovers and and crew coordination. The results also show that the aircraft can be operated within acceptable limits of workload, even under highly demanding circumstances as simulated during the certification flights.