Corporate and Business Flight Operations face unique challenges in the aviation industry. First, more corporate and business aircraft are long-range aircraft; therefore, crews flying these aircraft are facing many of the challenges that occur in other long-haul operations (e.g., Part 121). Second, corporate flying often requires long waiting periods on the ground between outbound and return flights while the company's business takes place, making long duty days possible. Third, because corporate flights are often dictated by the schedule of a single person or small group, corporate flight schedules can be unpredictable. Fourth, flight safety takes on a unique perspective for corporate/executive operations because a single aircraft can be transporting all top-level management of a company, which can make a single flight critical to a company's survival.

To examine the effect of these challenges on corporate and business flight departments, the Fatigue Countermeasures Group has implemented a survey study. The objectives of this survey are to determine operationally significant factors that affect fatigue, performance, and alertness in corporate/ business operations.

The survey consists of 107 questions, which cover 6 basic sections--General (Demographics), Sleeping at Home, Flying Information, Duty, Fatigue, Work Environment--and a 7th section addressing Management Pilots. We have collaborated with industry representatives, including members of the Flight Safety Foundation, who represent several corporate flight departments, and the National Business Aircraft Association (NBAA). This collaboration is intended to insure that common concerns of corporate flight operations are addressed in the Survey, and to incorporate the knowledge of corporate industry members into survey language, sampling procedures, etc. As in the other surveys from this Group, all responses are anonymous and confidential. This is accomplished by de-identifying the surveys--no names are used, and no record is kept of who receives which survey.

A mass mailing of nearly 11,000 surveys were sent to the more than 2,000 NBAA member organizations. Almost 1,500 surveys were returned by individuals and data was entered into a large database. An intensive phase of data analysis is nearing completion with the goal of completing a final report in the form of a NASA Technical Memorandum sometime in the near future.

Download the full report in Adobe Acrobat .PDF format below.

Flight_Ops_XIII_CorpSurv.pdf (298 K)