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Languages : en
Pages : 66
Book Description
Fatigue encountered in airlifts to foreign military operations can be severe enough to pose a flight safety hazard. This study is an attempt to document to what extent fatigue (and time zone changes of five & six hours) can impact on aircrew performance during routine re-supply missions to former Yugoslavia. In the first phase of the study, aircrew sleep hygiene was assessed immediately prior to & throughout ten missions to Bosnia. Aircrew psychomotor performance was also assessed during flight. Phase two involved a laboratory-based fatigue countermeasure study in which melatonin and zopiclone were evaluated as facilitators of early circadian sleep. In this phase, residual effects of these medications on aircrew performance after sleep were also studied. The final phase was an operational evaluation of the lab-proven countermeasures in 70 missions to Bosnia. The performance of aircrew using the medications is compared to performance using placebos. At the close of this phase, a laboratory study also compared a new short-acting sleep medication, zaleplon, against two other sleep medications (zopiclone and temazepam) and melatonin in order to quantify the depth of their respective impacts on psychomotor performance and the post-ingestion time required for return to normal performance.
