Who's Snoozing in the Cockpit
By Diana Fairechild
AIRLINE CREWS COPE WITH CHRONIC SLEEP DEPRIVATION

As an in-flight purser on international flights, I had a key to the cockpit and entered the cockpit whenever I needed to coordinate cabin services with the captain.

One night, I found all three pilots asleep. On longhaul overwater flights, the airplane is often on automatic pilot but, of course, all the pilots are not permitted to sleep at the same time.

Today's new security measures prohibit flight attendants from entering the cockpit unannounced; now no one monitors if the pilots are sleeping.

For 21 years, I worked at least 10 nights a month, and many nights I was on duty over 14 hours. Sometimes sitting upright on landings my body would fall asleep without my permission!

Today, working conditions are worse for flight attendants. I was guaranteed 8.5 hours in a hotel room between flights and now they have no guarantees. A flight attendant's rest break officially starts when the captain sets the aircraft's brakes after arrival. So they are actually on their rest break when they are saying goodbye to passengers, attending to wheel chairs, unaccompanied minors, and lost items.

Once at the hotel, if a flight attendant could then fall asleep on demand, she might get four or five hours of sleep before heading back to the airport.

What the FAA now calls "adequate rest" produces sleep deprivation, night after night, year after year. Crew sleep deprivation should be brought to Amnesty International, not the FAA, which knows about this problem but doesn't make any changes.

DEAR PASSENGERS, in an in-flight emergency, whether it's a fire, a hijacking, or a water landing, the pilots won't come out of the cockpit. Your capable, sleep-deprived flight attendants will be there for you as best they can.

Today the pilots get at least eight hours rest between flights. But is that enough? Are they still snoozing in the cockpit?