by Capt. Paul Reuter, ECA Vice President

This summer, millions of Europeans will board planes expecting to be carried across skies by highly trained, well-rested professionals. But the blunt reality is that behind the cockpit door, many pilots are exhausted.

The flight you take from Brussels to Palma or Frankfurt to Alicante might look like a routine 2-hour hop. But it could be the third or fourth leg in a pilot’s 13-hour day – one in which they’ve had no real break, no time to leave the cockpit between flights, and barely a moment to stretch or use the bathroom. They may have woken up at or reported for duty at 4 a.m. for the 4th or 5th consecutive day. While passengers will be looking forward to arriving at their destination, pilots will be busy planning contingencies, anticipating weather issues, mentally troubleshooting dozens of in-flight variables and making up for delays and disruptions during the day – all while often physically and mentally running on empty.

According to a 2023 fatigue study among almost 7.000 pilots, three out of four European pilots reported experiencing at least one microsleep – a momentary lapse in consciousness – while operating an aircraft in the past month. One in four said it happened five times or more! Nearly 73% said they did not get enough rest between duties. 

We wouldn't allow a doctor to perform surgery under these conditions. Why do we accept it from the people flying our planes?

How can this be, when European safety rules clearly state that a crew member may not operate a flight unless she/ he is “fit for duty”?

Despite this rule, many crew members show up for duty when unfit, some out of a sense of duty to their colleagues or passengers but many also because they fear consequences from their employer.

But that’s not all. Numerous airlines have found ways to make this even worse.

At the heart of it is something called Commander’s Discretion – a rarely discussed rule in European aviation that allows a pilot to extend their flight duty day by one or two hours beyond the legal maximum limit – but only in exceptional cases, like an unexpected delay or emergency. Instead, many airlines, have turned it into a backdoor scheduling tool – compensating for poor flight planning without buffers – routinely relying on pilots to push through long, fatiguing shifts.

And when pilots refuse – when they decide they are too tired to safely operate a flight – they are often punished. The same 2023 study showed that a staggering 60 percent were afraid to refuse to extend a flight duty, even when exhausted. 

This isn’t speculation. We have seen numerous testimonies and spoken to many pilots from various airlines. Captains describe being summoned into closed-door meetings to “explain themselves.” Others say they’ve had promotions or transfers to another base revoked after refusing to do a Commander’s Discretion. The message is unmistakable: your discretion isn’t really yours. Say no, and you’ll pay for it.

This isn't just an aviation issue. It's a health issue. And it’s very much a passenger safety issue.

What makes the problem more alarming is how airlines deflect responsibility. When delays pile up – as they will again this summer – airline executives will likely blame air traffic control, weather, airports, or staffing shortages. But few will point to their own scheduling practices, where long duty days, short turnarounds, and completely unrealistic planning have become the norm for many airlines.

This isn't just my opinion. It’s also the concern of European Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas, who recently warned that Europe could face 38,000 flights a day this summer, up from 35,000 last year. In a letter to EU transport ministers, he urged airlines to file “realistic flight plans” and “build in buffers” to avoid repeating last year’s chaos (and the year before’s, and before…)

Meanwhile, the European Aviation Safety Agency launched a safety campaign warning that being “fit for duty” means more than simply following time-limit rules. It means acknowledging human limits. It means recognising that no one can be vigilant for excessively long hours without rest.

Safety is often seen as a given – well-maintained engines, rigorous security checks, smart cockpit design. But the greatest safety feature on any flight are the two people flying it. If we ignore the mental and physical limits of our flight crews, no amount of engineering will save us from the consequences.

Unfortunately, fatigue is often seen as something abstract and airlines regularly use the regulatory limits as productivity targets and seem blind to the potential negative effects.

So this summer, when you’re sitting on a delayed plane, before blaming the Air Traffic Control or the weather, ask a different question: Are the people flying this aircraft rested enough to do it safely? And what are the airlines doing – or failing to do – to ensure that?

Airlines can’t fly on tired pilots forever. The system will break. The only question is whether we fix it before something worse happens.

About the author: Capt. Paul Reuter is an active commercial airline pilot and Vice-President of the European Cockpit Association in Brussels.