Evaluation of a pilot’s speech before a flight might prove to be an accurate means of determining whether he or she is dangerously sleepy or fatigued1 and should not fly an aircraft, according to a report by a team of Brazilian researchers.2
The report, published in the April issue of Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, based the conclusion on analysis of the communication between a pilot and controllers in an air traffic control tower just before a fatal accident.
The report did not discuss many of the details of the accident flight, “due to ethical considerations,” but disclosed that the pilot was a 45-year-old Brazilian man with no preexisting disease and that flight operations before the 1000 local time crash were uneventful. There had been no reported problems with the airplane and no complaints from the pilot, the report added.
“Near the time of landing, the pilot committed a technical failure that caused the a…
