• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.29-73
• /
• 2012

Aviation safety is the State and industry's top priority and more scientific approaches for fatigue management should be needed. There are lately various studies and regulation changes for crew fatigue management with ICAO, FAA and EASA. ICAO issued the provisions of fatigue management for flight crew since 1st edition, 1969, of Annex 6 operation of aircraft as a Standards and Recommended practice(SARPs). Unfortunately, there have been few changes and improvement to fatigue management provisions since the time they were first introduced. However the SARPs have been big changed lately. ICAO published guidance materials for development of prescriptive fatigue regulations through amendment 33A of Annex 6 Part 1 as applicable November 19th 2009. And then ICAO introduced additional amendment for using Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) with $35^{th}$ amendment in 2011. According to the Annex 6, the State of the operator shall establish a) regulations for flight time, flight duty period, duty period and rest period limitations and b) FRMS regulations. The Operator shall implement one of following 3 provisions a) flight time, flight duty period, duty period and rest period limitations within the prescriptive fatigue management regulations established by the State of the Operator; or b) a FRMS; or c) a combination of a) and b). U.S. FAA recently published several kinds of Advisory Circular about flightcrew fatigue. U.S. passed "Airline Safety and FAA Extension Act of 2010" into law on August 1st, 2010. This mandates all commercial air carriers to develop a FAA-acceptable Fatigue Risk Management Plan(FRMP) by October 31st, 2010. Also, on May 16, 2012, the FAA published a final rule(correction) entitled 'Flightcrew Member Duty and Rest Requirements; correction to amend its existing prescriptive regulations. The new requirements are required to implement same regulations for domestic, flag and supplemental operations from January 4, 2014. EASA introduced a Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) 2010-14 entitled "Draft opinion of the European Aviation Safety Agency for a Commission Regulation establishing the implementing rules on Flight and Duty Time Limitations and Rest Requirements for Commercial Air Transport with aeroplanes" on December 10, 2010. The purpose of this NPA is to develop and implement fatigue management for commercial air transport operations. Comparing with Korean and foreign regulations regarding fatigue management, the provisions of ICAO, FAA, EASA are more considering various fatigue factors and conditions. Korea regulations should be needed for some development of insufficiency points. In this thesis, I present the results of the comparative study between domestic and foreign regulations in respect of fatigue management crew member. Also, I suggest legal proposals for amendment of Korea Aviation act and Enforcement Regulations concerning fatigue management for crew members. I hope that this paper is helpful to change korea fatigue regulations, to enhance aviation safety, and to reduce the number of accidents relating to fatigue. Fatigue should be managed at all level such as regulators, experts, operators and pilots. Authority should change surveillance mind-set from regulatory auditor to expert adviser. Operators should identify various fatigue factors and consider to crew scheduling them. Crews should strongly manage both individual and duty-oriented fatigue issues.