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This article is the ninth in a series on landmark events in aviation since Flight Safety Foundation was founded in 1945.
When Charles Lindbergh made his 33-hour trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, fatigue was perhaps his greatest challenge. He fought off sleep for much of the flight, occasionally dozing off and waking again, seconds — or, sometimes, minutes — later.
In the decades that followed, fatigue has remained a challenge for pilots, and they — along with operators, regulators, researchers, and other safety advocates in the aviation community, including Flight Safety Foundation — have sought reliable methods of ensuring that flight crewmembers remain alert in the skies.
The basic dictionary definition of fatigue is “extreme t…
