Evaluation of fatigue risk management practices in airline companies and modeling their effects in crew rostering problem

In the aviation industry, which is one of the safest transportation services in the world, risks that can affect flight safety need to be managed efficiently. Fatigue is one of those risks that can cause dangerous cases or accidents in this 24/7 service industry by decreasing human performance in different ways. Therefore; it has to be managed well. In recent years, the term Fatigue Risk Management System has been created by combining outcomes of fatigue with safety and risk management processes. Another factor that has great importance for aviation sector in terms of flight safety and cost management is efficient crew planning. It is inevitable to use mathematical programming in crew scheduling model due to high number of limits and insufficient time to find solutions. Since more than 70 percent of accidents are caused by human error; incorporating Fatigue Risk Management elements into these programming languages has become a necessity in terms of flight safety. This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, risk management elements in aviation organizations and their importance have been explained. In the second chapter, the definition of fatigue; fatigue monitoring; reasons and effects of fatigue, and the elements of fatigue risk managements have been evaluated both within the frame of existing literature and the regulations of International Civil Aviation Organization and European Civil Aviation Safety Agency. It has been aimed at providing an insight to practices in airlines and to studies in the literature by including a comparison between academic studies and regulations. According to the literature review, which is given in the third and the last chapter, since there are no elements of crew fatigue in the crew rostering problems have been studied so far, a mathematical model has been developed in which elements of fatigue in aviation was added into crew rostering problem, and the outcomes could be evaluated without requiring a different measure. Thus; it has been aimed at increasing flight safety by evaluating the fatigue level of crew and making fatigue risk management practical and economic through enabling the airline manager to define additional crew number easily. At the end of the last chapter, the data set taken from the sample airway is inserted in the model developed, and the pilots' fatigue level has been compared.